When It’s Worse After Surgery

con’t from It Went Just Fine Up Until The Surgery

“Suzanne…you’re in recovery. The surgery is over.”

But I can’t open my eyes. The pain is too severe. The cramping is piercing all of my muscles below my chest. I’m trying to breathe through it with the only technique I know, short, sharp breaths. My fists are clenched, my whole body is rigid with pain.

“Suzanne you’re going to have to slow your breathing down and stop crying.”

Maybe you should give me some f***ing pain medication! Do you think I’m doing this for fun? 

I told my brain to stop feeling the pain. Just stop. You can get through this. You can do it.

I managed to slow my breathing down. But the pain didn’t go away. It got worse.

Every hour or so I was told I needed to get up and try to go to the bathroom. Until I peed I couldn’t go home.

Each time I was helped into the bathroom nothing happened. The pain escalated.

It was 4:30. Must have been close to closing time because the nurse came around and an ultra sound was done on my bladder. There was nothing in it. No wonder I couldn’t pee. It was like trying to squeeze blood from a rock. The Dr. was called and it was determined I could go home as long as I peed by the next day.

As happy as I was to leave I wondered how on earth I would manage at home in such pain. I started popping the Dilaudid that I’d been given. Naproxen and Dilaudid like candy. Didn’t matter. It didn’t work. Just made me nauseous and dizzy on top of the overwhelming pain.

I got home and went straight to bed.

This part is a bit blurry. I remember being in extreme pain, unable to move, taking lots of meds and sleeping for about 30 minutes at a time. I had the heating pad on my stomach. I couldn’t tell if it helped or not. I held a cold washcloth on my head trying to stave off the all-consuming nausea.

This was Thursday night.

All day Friday I suffered thinking this was normal.

Robert had slept in the guest room because I was in too much pain. I had a pan and metal spatula to “call him” should I need him.

Saturday I awoke from a Dilaudid induced fitful night to find the bed was wet. All around me. Everything was wet. The white sheets were now pink/rust.

I started hitting the metal pan.

Where was it coming from? I’m not sleeping on a Kool-Aid filled waterbed that broke.

When I was able to stand up I noticed my stomach looked like I was 7 months pregnant and about to give birth to a conehead alien baby.

My stomach was literally pointed.

And from my extended bellybutton a fountain had appeared spewing out pink liquid.

Apparently the cone head baby was going to be born via my bellybutton and my water was breaking.

We applied cotton dressings. Robert had to go to the store three times because I just kept soaking through them in minutes.

Finally I got the idea of maxi pads. We started strapping those onto my stomach. Two horizontally and three vertically. That might last 60 minutes, sometimes it only lasted 15. Robert had to go and buy more maxi pads and tape.

How much discharge should I have after surgery? Did I even have that much liquid in my body? Where was it coming from? The alien baby?

All this time I was in pain. Serious pain. And the nausea. Oh man… the nausea.

I thought about going to the Emergency. I thought about waiting for hours maybe a full day in Emergency. I thought about the last time I was in Emergency. How horrible it had been.

I decided to wait it out and try to see the surgeon’s office first thing in the morning.

By now we were strapping full sized bath towels to my stomach. There was too much pink liquid. Robert was doing laundry constantly because we had no more towels or sheets left in the house. I was leaking too fast.

I kept taking the pain meds.

I kept feeling sick.

I kept getting worse.

Continued here… I can survive if I just don’t have to do these two things…

 

 

 

 

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