#8 November 13-14

Surgery Day

After not very successful night trying to sleep, the alarm went off at 5 a.m. For those of us who have been retired for a while, 5 a.m. is not a viable hour. We prefer to believe that it no longer exists, and are most unhappy when given proof of its existence.

I had mostly packed my bag the night before, so it didn’t take long to get ready. Couldn’t have any coffee, but was able to take a couple of my normal daily pills. So glad I could take the Prilosec which was denied me when I had my knee surgery. Acid reflux contributed to most of the pain after that surgery.  Our son showed up to drive us to the hospital, and even though we got in some morning traffic, we still got to the hospital by 7 a.m. which is when I was supposed to check in.

I had my information sheet printed out by Temp, so was slightly (and with reason) concerned with it being correct, but presented myself at the specified location.  After a few minutes, I was called up, and told, of course, this was the wrong location, and we had to go upstairs. Score another one for Temp.

My first procedure was the wire location. Usually this is done on a mammogram machine, but for my tumor which is really deep, they decided to use the ultrasound. That was OK by me, since I wasn’t looking forward to being squished this early in the morning. Unfortunately, neither the tumor, nor the tumor marker wanted to show up on the ultrasound. There was a lot of heavy pressing, and at one point I said, “OK, false alarm, I can go home now.” Not so fast, they said, and finally found the little bugger.

They had to push a needle through to the tumor, then thread a wire in it which the surgeon would follow to the tumor. Well, of course, the needle didn’t want to go down there. The resident with the guidance of the radiologist manfully tried, but eventually the radiologist had to step in and get it situated correctly. Since this is a teaching hospital, I have no problem with having students learning on me, just sorry it was so tough on the resident. They had given me lidocaine for all this, so I was in no pain. 

After that, I did have to have a mammogram just to make sure the wire was where it needed to be, but the technician assured me that it would be gentle, and it was. Everyone was very nice, friendly and helpful, constantly inquiring if I was OK. When it was all over, they said I was such a good patient, maybe I could come back every day, but I said I thought I’d skip that part.

They wheeled me out to the surgery pre-op area picking up my entourage on the way. Not only were my husband and son in attendance, but also my daughter-in-law and her mother, who drove in from Detroit. My technician said having that many people show up for my surgery said something about the kind of person I was; I said no, it says something about the kind of persons they were.

We got to pre-op, I dressed in this enormous gown – could have gotten 2-3 people in there with me, and the moment of truth happened – IV time. Gosh, I dread these things. Luckily, she got it in first time. I was so happy.

Numerous people came by with clipboards, all of them asking the same questions, except the anesthesiologist, he had an IPad. They let my husband and son come back until time to head for the operating theater. I remember someone said, “We’re going to give you something to relax you on the trip to surgery.” That’s the last thing I remember, although one of my surgeon’s assistants said I was quite talkative. God knows what I said.

I went in for surgery at about 9:30 a.m., and I fully expected to be in my room by noonish. Imagine my surprise when they were waking me up in recovery, and I noticed the clock said 2:10 p.m. Evidently my blood pressure had spiked during surgery, and they were working to get it back down to normal levels. I vaguely remembered that this had happened during my knee surgery, but had totally forgotten it.  I guess I need to check on that.

They would only allow one person back, so my son came since my husband uses an electric cart, and the nurse said the space was a little tight. I was very dry mouthed, and my son was wonderfully handing me ice chips. He is also very funny, so we were doing a lot of laughing. They probably thought I was really hitting the pain meds. My son said the surgeon was very pleased with the surgery, felt the margins would be good, and they were able to bypass some nerve clusters.

They asked what I wanted for pain relief – I could have a shot or oral medication. The biggest pain I had was in my shoulder blade on my back, I knew the tumor was deep, but I didn’t think it was THAT deep. I chose the oral, but it didn’t touch the shoulder blade pain. I know I should have told them it was an “8.” . Brian Regan does know what he's talking about. They then gave me a shot, and a little later another shot, which finally took most of the edge off. “I got me some 8’s!”

They kept taking my BP, and gradually it began to drop. Eventually they said, I could be released to go to my room, only there was nobody available for transport. We kept laughing, talking, and eating ice chips. Finally about 5 p.m., transport arrived, a very personable young man who was saying hello to everyone we passed. My entourage joined in, and I was wheeled to a large private room for the observation period that I had to be there.

They gave me a menu, and told me to go ahead and order dinner, since it took about 45 min. to get there. Since I have been on Seattle Sutton for two weeks, the hamburger sounded really good - no make that a cheeseburger, and add grilled onions, mushrooms, and bacon! There was some mix-up having me in the system to get a meal, but it finally got sorted out. I sent my entourage home, and settled in for the evening.

I was able to ambulate right away, took care of the elimination necessities, and was most surprised to see royal blue pee.  ♬“Blue pee, smiling at me, nothing but blue pee, do I see.”♫ Sorry about that. Evidently this was from the reverse mapping procedure where they shoot dye into my arm to see which lymph nodes can be spared.

People kept coming in and doing things, but finally food arrived. I had had nothing since 6:30 p.m. the night before, and wouldn’t you know it . . . I wasn’t hungry. I made myself chew, swallow and repeat until most of the burger was gone. It really tasted just fine, particularly for hospital food, I just had no appetite.  However, the last time I had surgery, I didn’t eat much, and wound up with a low blood sugar reaction that was thought to be a heart attack.  See One Does Not Simply Walk into Mordor from my blog about knee replacement. I didn’t want that to happen again.

All I wanted to do was drink – not that kind of drinking – I was all over the ice tea that came with my meal, and a strawberry smoothie for dessert. When that was gone, I drank water running the poor aide crazy with refilling my pitcher. Sleep began to overtake me early, but for only about an hour at a time. I’d wake up and see the hour, call for my aide to get me to the bathroom (royal blue pee moving up the chromatic scale with each evacuation,) and go back to sleep. Next hour – rinse, repeat. At one point about 1:30 a.m., I was so wide awake, I just turned on the light and read for a while. At some point in the night, I changed over from the pain shot to the Tylenol 3 pills.

By morning, Pee had moved in the green spectrum, ♬”Once there was green pee, kissed by the . . .” No, I can’t go there.

For breakfast, I decided to really get some good stuff that I would want to eat, so ordered an omelet with Swiss cheese, mushroom, onions, tomatoes and bacon, whole wheat pancake, red grapes, and coffee. It sounds really good as I type it, and it probably was, but I only ate what I could force down.

My surgeon’s “fellow” came in with two in her entourage, and they removed the craft foam bandage which was really irritating me.  They also talked about how to empty my drain which others had been doing, but that I was going to have to deal with when I got home. Not hard to do, just yucky.

My nurse came in and said she was putting in for my discharge, so I called my husband to head on up. Since the IV was also removed I was able to move on my own, so I could brush my teeth, wash my face – oh the simple things that we miss so much when we can’t do them. With the craft foam gone, I thought I could probably get my sports bra on, so I gave that a shot.  It wasn't easy, but the "Zip, Zip Hooray Bra" (I am not making that up) was eventually placed without too much pain.  

I got dressed and laid back down on the bed to wait when my surgeon showed up.  She was surprised I was so ready to leave. She again reassured me that everything seemed to have gone well, and that she would call me Thursday when the pathology came back.

Just as she was finishing, my husband and son showed up. We finished up all the paperwork, and got the heck out of Dodge. I have to say that every single person I had contact with was exceptional, but truly, there is no place like home.