Connect The Dots

Hey everyone!!! I've missed you all! Thank you so much for all the kind words and thoughts. I know this is what helped me get through the day effortlessly.

I thought I would give you blow by blow details of my adventure.

• Friday the 13th, 3:00 am wake up call. Finally get Mr. Sign to haul his butt out of bed at 3:45 am.
• 5:30 am, get to the hospital after missing the the road it's on.
• Register just ahead of 10 other people. Yay, no waiting for me.
• Give a urine sample (hooray, I'm not pregnant!)
  
• Receive the largest gown the hospital has. It looked like a strapless gown since the neck hole was so large.
• 6:30 am, I'm taken to the surgical holding area where I watch the rest of the room fill up.
  
• The nurse, EKG tech and the surgeon all decide to come talk to me at the same time. The surgeon wins. He explains that he will be doing some exploratory diagnosis while he's in there. He even draws me a picture. I ask him if I can keep the gall bladder. He says that it's no longer allowed because of bio hazards. He says he can only imagine what I would do with it.
• 7:20 am, nurse tries to start an IV. I've had at least a hundred IVs in my day and show her where she will be successful. She picks a different spot. She says the new catheters are not sharp and it hardly pokes through my skin. The vein rolls and she has to call in enforcements. The new person tries a different spot and fails. I show her my spot. She doesn't like it but tries and gets it in. Yay! I only have one black and blue arm.
• The nurse anesthetist comes in to talk to me and she has the most comforting voice. She explains exactly what will happen and then gives me some "la la juice".
  
• She rolls me to the OR. I slide over to the operating table (which feels much bigger than it did last time) and she tells me we are just waiting on the anesthesiologist. We waited for 10 minutes. I got to have conversations with everyone, including the surgeon who was joking about letting the Physician's assistant do my surgery.
  
• Finally, the anesthesiologist shows up and says that he was trying to drink his coffee in peace but the OR kept interrupting him. I'm assuming he was kidding because he laughed.
• The nurse told me to think about Hawaii and drift off to sleep.
• 9:15 am (I can see the clock). My eyes are open and I finally figure out where I am. I'm shaking violently and I hear the nurse say, "give her (fill in the blank [I was on drugs, I can't be expected to remember this stuff])". They also piled 5 warm blankets on me and I was in heaven.
• The nurse gave me ice chips and I called her a goddess.
• 10:30 am, I'm returned to where I started, only there are differnt patients. I'm doing better than all of them. The rest were grumpy.
• 11:30 am, I'm told to get up to go to the bathroom. They get my clothes and tell me to get dressed. I have a feeling I'm being kicked out.
• 11:45, a little tiny old lady comes with a wheel chair to try to escort me out. She hits 3 walls and can't get me into the elevator. I told her I would walk so I got out of the chair and onto the elevator. I turned around to thank her and she was already gone. Hmm..the Little Old Lady From Pasedena just sped away.
• 1:00 pm, we arrive home. I'm in total disbelief that I had surgery just a few short hours before and now I'm home lying on my couch. It's amazing that you can lose a body part and still be sent home in a matter of hours.

This surgery was so much easier than the last. Pain has been minimal. I still have some pain where the gall bladder was, but it's no worse than it was before surgery.

The surgeon took the time to look around in my abdomen since he was there. He was able to use two of my old incisions but had to make two new ones (for a total of eight beautiful scars. I didn't think I'd ever be a bikini model anyway). He checked on the previous gastric bypass surgery that he had performed. He shot dye into my liver to check the ducts for gall stones. The last thing he did was to check on my intestines for hernias. He said everything looked excellent. I'm so relieved. he also said that it was definately my gall bladder that had been causing me all the trouble. He told me all of this in recovery and said I wouldn't remember any of it. I guess I come out of anesthesia easily because I remember everything in vivid detail.

The doctor did say he would like to see me take 2 weeks off work but I'm going to see how well I do after a week. I can't lift anything for a while which won't help me at my job.

Thanks again for all of the comfort and support. It really meant a lot to me.