Cinn
My journey began on Earth Day, April 22, 2008. I saw my primary care physician and we agreed to begin the procedure for WLS. I'm just beginning.
4/29/2008: Attended the required seminar.
4/30/2008: Called for my consult. It's May 27. That seems so far away!
I'm obviously not very good at this. I'm not a blogger kind of person.
It's August 27, 2008. My surgery date is September 3, 2008. I'm on a pre-op liquid diet and I hate it. I can't tolerate the protein shakes so I'm puking my guts up. That leaves broth and Jell-o. Gee. So I'm starving w/ a horrible headache. I can't imagine doing this until the 3rd but I have to shrink my liver. I'm so afraid I won't and I'll fail and will have to have an open or worse...no surgery at all. So I'll try. I want to look back and read this when I can't take one more bite of food because I'm so full...so I know the starvation was real.
I had a horrible experience with surgery so if you don't want to know the details don't read! The surgeon had a hard time getting through my abdominal wall, it was tough. Then he said my internal organs are very small, I'm skinny on the INSIDE. Very funny. My surgery took about 5 hours. I was in horrible pain as soon as I woke up. I was maxed out on morphine but still in pain. When I finally got to my room, the nurse and orderly said to 'scootch' onto the bed from my gurney. I said "You've got to be !@#$% kidding me." Nope. It was awful.
The pain did not cease. I was in the hospital for about a week walking the halls and crying due to the pain. Harper hospital sucks. The staff sucks. I was left for 2 hours w/o pain meds and the whole time my IV beeper was going off....this was from midnight to 2 AM. Nobody helped me do anything. I was on my own. This is the worst hospital ever.
I went home in awful pain. It didn't get better. It got worse. We went to the ER and they said we had to go back to Harper. After spending the entire day in Harper's awful ER triage being ignored, I was finally admitted. They ran tests and found out I had a hematoma in my left side. This is a blood clot that's not in a vein or artery. After a few days in pain, they attempted a CT Scan where they stuck a needle in trying to get the clot. I was awake for this torture. They couldn't get it. At one point I was sick and had to pee. Everyone had left the room. EVERYONE. I kept calling out and nobody was there. Shitty hospital I swear to you. Someone finally came back in and I said forget it, we're done w/ this. So back home I went to wait for the hematoma to absorb.
This is when I noticed I wasn't sleeping at all. AT ALL. My home nurse phoned the surgeon and got him to prescribe Ambien. He typically didn't do this but did this time. It didn't work. After a week of no sleep I had an anxiety attack and ended up in ER. The doctor at Huron Valley treated me like I was a whining baby. I asked him if he ever went for 7 days with no sleep. He acted like I was making it up. The nurse was darling and the staff sweet. They gave me some Ativan to calm me down and sent me home. Still no sleep.
My home nurse was my guardian angel. She was the one on the phone w/ the surgeon, the pharmacy, my primary. I don't think I'd have made it w/o her. I cried when she had to go. She had me see my primary doctor who shook her head at me and looked at my husband like I was a freak. She prescribed Clonazepam which worked.
Amazing how you become a different person after sleep!
The shrink I had to see for my psych eval took me off my antidepressants before surgery. BAD, BAD shrink! My primary put me on something that didn't help so we went back to the Paxil I was on before surgery. Again, miraculous change. Why don't they THINK and LISTEN to us?
I was healing, my wound healed closed and I was getting better.
That's when my wound started to itch one night. I called the home nurse and she said put A&D ointment on it. I did and went to bed. Got up at 3AM with a bloodsoaked nightgown. Went into the bathroom and lifted it up. Blood and puss was shooting (literally) out of my wound. My DH and DD were grabbing towels trying to mop it all up. Blood everywhere. I stood in the shower and let it bleed in there. Back to Huron Valley ER. Can you guess what they made us do?
Yep, back to Harper Hospital. I cried the entire way there. I was back to square 1 mentally. I hate that place. I could not stop crying and I don't think it unreasonable. I tried, really. When the surgeon finally got to me, he explained I had an abscess. Thank God it burst OUTward, not inward! He treated me like I was being a baby and said I was the most anxious patient he ever had. WHAT the F ever!
They had to suction it all out, and made the hole even bigger than before. Four days in the hospital on IV antibiotics. I was a psycho mess I admit. I cried the entire time. I wanted out of that hell hole and I felt I took 1000 steps backward.
My home nurse was called back to me. She helped me through it again. Once my Paxil kicked in and I was getting sleep by whatever means I could, I was sane.
All in all I was out of work 3 months.
It's July 27, 2009 and I'm almost 11 months out. Lost 130 pounds. I have horrible skin on my belly and arms. Sagging boobs. I'm surgery phobic now so I don't know! We'll see. Still using sleeping pills to sleep. Turns out I have a fibroid tumor in my uterus and 3 cysts on my left ovary. Those, my Mirena IUD, and the rapid weight loss are all tossing out hormones, fighting each other. This is what my GYN thinks is causing the sleep issues. I'm hoping when I stop losing I can sleep on my own.
WOW moments were fitting in an airplane seat, a booth, my car seat, just fitting anywhere really. Experiencing hair loss, typical. Some weird skin issues. Gritty muscles. Trying to keep protein high. One day at at time!
