The doctor said that the tumor was bigger than the uterus! Man I wish I could have seen it. Sounds so gross and awesome!
The operating room looked just like they do on TV–everyone in masks and huge overhead lights and a metal table with instrument trays on it. That was the scariest part, being wheeled onto the set of “ER.”
I was in the hospital two nights, hooked up to a morphine drip. You can only demand morphine every eight minutes. The first night I woke up every half hour from the pain, pushed the morphine button, and went back to sleep until it wore off (30 minutes). Even though there isn’t anything to do at the hospital, being on narcotics meant that I was not dissatisfied with the lack of stimulus. Also, I had awesome visitors who brought me awesome gifts: Caroleen brought a stuffed toy uterus! Rachel brought WINE! Veronica brought CLARA who made me a cute necklace! Evany brought a scary teeth-whitening laser and a long, fake hair ponytail hair clip! Kate brought boxes of food! And Heidi brought weird magazines (Tiger Beat?)! And everyone contributed a trashy celeb magazine or two. So I’m all up to date on how Jennifer Aniston is doing FINE. Seriously, stop talking about it. She is fine. Really! Brad who!?
That said, on Saturday when I knew I was going to go home I was SO READY. My day nurse was sort of clueless so I had to basically tell her to call my doctor and find out what the plan was for my release. (My night nurses were all very awesome especially Lily, sorry about barfing on you.) I was sprung by 3pm and Ivan came and got me and we filled my prescriptions and it was so nice to be home.
After sleeping all night the first night home (Sunday night), I woke up for the first time without any pain medication at all in my system and I could barely walk. When Evany saw me on Friday she was surprised that I could sit up and get in and out of bed by myself. Turns out my extraordinary mobility was 100% due to the morphine drip! Now that I don’t have the needle in me, I walk like an old woman and sitting and standing and walking and sneezing and everything feel like I am getting knifed.
The scar is enormous, and my whole stomach is distended, probably because all the organs that are left got jostled during surgery and they are not used to being jostled in that way. The nurse AND the doctor kept telling me how my scar was so tiny–and maybe for this procedure it’s tiny, but it looks so big to me. It’s not in the place I thought it would be, either…although it is in the place where logically it should be, so I guess I just wasn’t thinking. I thought it would be off to one side, like an appendectomy scar. Nope! it’s right above Cootertown. And a lot closer to the town square of Cootertown than I thought–I thought it would be in the outlying counties. Nope.
Alright you can stop picturing my vagina now. Sorry about that. But I really was surprised.
I’ve been sleeping a lot, my friends all offer to come over but I’m not sure I am ready yet–it’s nice to know that at any minute I can just shut my eyes and nap for however long I need to. Pilot is at the kennel for daycare which is great, but the house is so quiet! I had big visions of what I was going to do with my time off, like start a new novel, organize my office, get rid of old clothes, but I think it’s way too early for that. I don’t even know what I want to do–do I want to lie in bed or on the couch? Do I want to watch TV or play computer games? No idea.
Oh and another bummer, when I got weighed at the hospital I was 138 pounds, my highest in like a decade! I had no idea I’d gotten so fat! I knew I was on the heavy end of my normal range (128-132) and I hadn’t been weighing myself because I thought the scale would say 132. I mentioned it to Ivan and he said, yeah, you are the heaviest you’ve ever been since I’ve known you. And I thanked him for not saying anything, there are very specific periods of time where I am willing to hear negative truths about stuff like that. And he said, well I tell you look good because you do look good to me. So nice!
I think I sort of let myself go a bit, knowing that I’d lose a little weight due to the surgery. Well, now that I realize how far gone I got, I’m reigning it in. I was planning on just eating soup and liquids for the first week or two anyways but now I’m going to do that till I hit 125 pounds. And then I might keep it up till I get to 120! Actually 120 is not that great a weight for me because my clothes don’t fit right and my chest gets bony. But I might go that low just to counteract my horror at getting so big. Anyways, I’m down 2 pounds so far. By the end of the week it should be 5, end of next week, 10. I’ll keep you updated on the situation.
Again, comments don’t work here and I’m too lazy to update my version of Wordpress so send me anything at the normal email address. It’s in the last post if you’ve forgotten it.