I got banded on the 7th. I am now 5 days post op and feeling great. I've never been put under anesthesia before so that was interesting. I remember everything before. The super cute scrub nurse Phil coming to get me and walking to the OR. Getting the IV put in, a blood-pressure cuff on my right arm and whatever that thing is on your finger (measure pulse or oxygen content of blood, maybe both). The next thing that happened was Phil sticking some things on me don't know what they were for either. He then brought over an oxygen mask and told me to take deep breaths.... and then I woke up in recovery. Uhm... what happened to two hours?? I didn't even know I was getting the anesthetic already and then it was all over!
So I was all groggy in recovery and kind of antsy since my feet were absolutely freezing! I felt sorry for the nurse, my heart rate keep jumping around. Kind of settling and then jumping back up to about 110 beats per minute. They were kind of worried at first but then it settled. She kept having to run back and forth to me cause the machine monitering my pulse etc beeped every other minute. I also felt bad for her cause after I woke up she gave me a little sip of water and told me to just rest and go back to sleep for a bit. Little did she know that I absolutely cannot sleep if my feet are cold. Every night, even in the summer, I heat up a magic bag in the microwave for 3 minutes before bed just so that I can put it on my feet, without it... I need atleast two pairs of socks, a pair of slippers and my dog to patiently lie on my feet until they're toasty before I doze off.
So what could've been an easily passed two hours in recovery sleeping was instead me looking around and being inquizitive. I was home that day by dark I remember so it must have been no later than 7 o clock in the evening. That night I mostly slept and had the odd sip of water. I was sooo dehydrated. So day one post op I was doing good too. I'd had water and juice on hand all day was feeling good. Somewhere along the way I decided to have some pudding. Bad idea. My stomach totally retaliated against it. Was up twice during the night with severe nausea and a lot of dry heaving. It was sooo painful. I actually ended up having to phone my Dad at work and get him to pick up some gravol suppositories pronto since I couldn't even keep liquid gravol down and the taste of it just started the gag reflex on its on.
After my rough sunday night I took it pretty easy on monday and tuesday. Kept on using the gravol and stayed on water/juice only for monday and then added some jello on tuesday. I tollerated the jello well so I made some cream of mushroom soup and took the immersion blender to it. Went down smoothly. Yesterday I managed to eat a whole tin of vegetable soup (campbell's veg to be exact yummy) partially blended and it went down smooth too. So my dieticien had said that I will be able to tell when I'm ready for mushies so I'm going to try a perogie tonight... basically mashed potatoe and see how that goes. I've been getting a lot hungrier yesterday and today so I guess that means the swelling is going down and food is passing through much more easily.
My incisions (all 5) are healing well, they don't hurt. The only discomfort I have is when I'm sitting up kind of under the largest incision where the port is I sometimes get a weird almost tugging sensation. Is this normal? Maybe just the band and the line attached to the port moving or something? I don't know. I've been lying down a lot so I will need to start sitting up more and letting this sort itself out or get used to it I guess. Ok this is really long and I haven't even covered everything so there will be more to come!
Lots of Love - Les