i am feeling a lot better than i did at this time last week. more energy, less pain. i’m getting in at least 50 gm of protein/day.. which is getting closer to my ultimate goal of 78/day. i know once i’m fully on solid food again that it’ll become much easier.
wednesday is weigh day, and today i weighed 268.5 lbs, which means a loss of 5 lbs this week! i’ll take it!
that’s a loss of 17.5 since surgery and 37.5 since february! i’m a happy camper.
things are getting better all the time. my pain is less, unless i over do things. my energy is still somewhat limited, but i can see that it’s getting better. i still do get tired a lot.
i am SUPER BORED of living on liquids, and can’t wait until i can have foods with texture in my life again. i used to love pudding, really!! i would seriously stab someone for a crunchy apple right now.
things have been pretty good. each day being better than the one before. when i’m just sitting or hanging out, i have no pain. when i’m walking there is some from the one major incision site. it just kind of pulls and hurts. it still hurts to cough or sneeze. i can only lie on my back to sleep, so i have some stiffness there. i ran out of my beloved liquid vicodin yesterday. i am fairly broken up about this, as we had a sweet thing going on there. fare thee well, liquid vicodin. with the interesting “getting punched out by midgets at the pharmacy” dreams and general mental fogginess, you won’t soon be forgotten. or perhaps you will. where the hell am i?
i’ve been trying real hard to get protein in, which means i’ve had to rely on protein shakes, which i HATE with the white hot intensity of a million suns. they are teh sux, believe you me. even when i blend fruit and stuff in there, i don’t really like them. i drink them because i know my body needs the protein to heal and give me energy and all that fun stuff.. but as soon as i’m at a stage to get all my protein in from food, i’ll be kicking that shit to the curb.
i’m sleeping well and getting in lots of fluids. i think i’m doing everything i’m supposed to. today i start back at work. slowly. i have 3 half-hour appointments with hour-long breaks in between. hopefully, it’ll be ok. honestly, i’m a bit nervous of the whole thing.
hi!
well, it’s been quite the adventure. firstly, big BIG ups to dan for updating this thing when all that shit was going down. i appreciate it. he’s honestly the best boyfriend evar, and shall henceforth be known as dan, tbbe. i don’t know how i would have made it through this whole thing without him and my mom. they just poured so much love all over me, even when i was being a superbitch. what can i say, being in exquisite pain and not eating or sleeping for days makes me a bitchie kittie.
imma try to tell you how it all went down in full detail. a lot happened, and i was out of my head a lot, so hopefully i’ll remember everything.
on tuesday april 21st, we left for ypsilanti at around noon. got there in pretty good time, found our hotel and settled in. i was on only clear fluids that day, so i was kinda tired, weak and headachey all day. i actually had been dealing with a week’s worth of sinus headaches at that point. by evening, i was feeling pretty nauseated and really run down. i tossed and turned for much of the night.
we went to barix for 8 am on wed april 22nd. they took me in about 10 minutes after i got there. weighed me, and i had lost 20 lbs since my initial consult in feb. everyone was pleased with that. my weight that morning was 286 lbs. they took some blood. i followed a nurse to the pre-op area, where i was asked to change into a lovely gown. they put in an IV, shot me up with blood thinner. they took my temperature, and i was running a low-grade fever. my blood sugar and blood pressure were pretty high. i was pretty stressed out. they gave me some insulin to bring down my blood sugar fast. they had me drink some foul acid reducing stuff. they hooked me up to a heart monitor. my mom came in and gave me a hug and kiss, then dan too. i got a little teary eyed.
at that point, they gave me a sedative called versed, that along with calming you down, messes up your short-term memory. so i’m not 100% on what happened next. i have no recollection of being taken into the OR, but apparently i was awake and talking. what i remember next is waking up in my hospital room, and my mom and dan were there.
my pain was about a 6/10 right out of surgery. not bad, i thought. but a couple hours after i started getting these stabby pains that would come quite frequently that would register an 8. i mentioned it to the nurses, and they just told me to hit my morphine pump, which i did as frequently as i could, but it wasn’t touching that pain at all. they even gave me an extra shot of some other type of painkiller, and it did nothing for it as well. it took me a couple hours to figure out that i was getting that pain any time i swallowed. i mentioned it to the nurses. they said they’d mention it to dr pop when he arrived in the morning. i gained about 10 lbs from all the fluids they were pushing in my iv.
thurs april 23th, he arrived at 7 am, and while standing in my doorway told me he heard i wasn’t feeling well and that they’d be working on it today, since they’d be doing my leak test. (where they make you swallow some die, take an xray and see if the staple line in the stomach is stable) that whole day was long and horrible. my sugars, blood pressure and temperature were all running high, i had crazy pain all the time, and still hadn’t slept. they gave me ice chips to let melt in my super-dry mouth, but every time i had to swallow it i was in agony. they did my leak test. later, the tech came back because he said dr pop wanted to repeat one of the views. something apparently looked a little off. we did that. i sat in the recliner most of the day, just kinda staring into space.
at 6pm, dr pop came by and told me that something looked “fuzzy” on my leak test. they wanted to get me back into the OR, get me back under and get the scope back in to have a look. i started to cry. i was scared that something was really wrong.
i guess i was back in my room in an hour. the pain was gone, but dr pop said that they hadn’t seen or done anything at all. i found this to be very confusing, because obviously something had changed dramatically, but was just happy that the terrible pain was gone. my iv was taken out, and i was given sweet delicious water to sip on. i tried to sleep that night, but was pretty uncomfortable. my low back was sore from the way they prop you up in bed. i think i dozed maybe an hour or two, max.
morning of saturday april 25th, i finally got released at about 11 am. we went to a pharmacy to fill my sweet sweet pain killing prescription. got on the road and arrived home around 5 pm. i was EXHAUSTED. all i wanted was to go to sleep. my mom made the bed up for me in the guestroom, and when i lay down flat, i realized that i couldn’t take a full breath in. i was short of breath. i tried to find a position where it wasn’t an issue, but every position ended up with the same results. i moved around the house all night. from the bed to the couch. the couch to the recliner. the recliner back to bed. this is some fucking bullshit right here. i am ready to grab throats and crush them.
in the morning of the 26th, after my 5th night with no sleep, i am desperate. i page my surgeon and am all wtf. he says i should get to an emerg and have them take a chest x-ray.
my mom and i head to the nearest urgent care facility. they take a chest xray. it is inconclusive. they are concerned about a pulmonary embolism. they do a blood test called a d-dimer that is supposed to test for the pressence of thrombosis. the thing is, though.. that these tests are often positive in people who have had recent surgeries even if there is no thrombosis. mine comes back positive, of course. this has all taken 6 hours. i have not eaten nor have i brought my pain meds. they want to do a ct scan of my lungs, but there is no ct at the urgent care, so they refer me to the closest hospital.
we arrive at the hospital, and are there for another 6 hours. i am bursting into tears a lot. still nothing to eat, no pain meds. they finally get the ct done, and it shows SOMETHING that COULD BE a pulmonary embolism, but maybe not. the doctor is stuffing his face with cookies as he’s talking to me. i have visions of stabbing him many many times. i need to come back tomorrow for a v-q lung scan and a doppler ultrasound of my legs. he’s going to go call the dept and make those arrangements for me, just wait a moment… and the jerk disappears for 45 minutes. he comes back and i’m just bawling. i want to go home so bad. i’m nauseated from lack of food and in a world of hurt from no pain meds. he assures us he’s made the appointments, and we should just arrive at 9 am the following morning and we won’t have to wait around or anything.
i get home, take my meds, drink some tea, take a benadryl, and pass out for 8 hours. that was probably the worst day of all of them. i was coming apart. it was not pretty.
monday april 27th, we arrive at 9 am, and they have no idea who we are or why we are there. there have been no appointments made for us for either test, but worse… no doctor’s order to be found for the tests at all anywhere. so now they have to locate a doctor to review my file and get him to sign off for the tests. this takes 2 hours. the testing itself takes 45 minutes, then another 2 hour wait. the doc finally comes to see us, and thankfully, they were both negative. no pulmonary embolism! i am very very pleased to hear the news. he tells us that sometimes after a laparoscopic surgery, the c02 that they inject into your belly can irritate the diaphragm causing shortness of breath. ok this makes sense. we get the eff out of the hospital.
i slept like a baby again that night. tuesday was spent mostly sitting on my ass and relaxing. i was SO TIRED. seriously, never felt exhaustion like that. i guess all the days catching up to me. last night i went to bed at 9 pm and slept till 7:30 this morning. i don’t feel nearly as tired today. i’m working on getting my fluids in, getting in some protein, and just taking it easy a little. i have mild pain in the one incision, and this morning it was better than yesterday.
so here we are on wed april 29th, a week out. i got on the scale today, and it read 273.5 lbs! that’s a loss of 12.5 this week. i questioned a few times what i had done to myself during all the shit, but i know that this is going to have a happy ending. it was SUCH a tough go, and i’m still not in love with my surgery, but i can see things getting better day by day. i’m happy to be on my way over that terrible hump.
this was a lot to read. if you made it all the way through, you deserve cookies.
Well thats a relief in my mind. I got a message from her saying that she still feels much better than yesterday. We’ll see today when they feel they can release her from the hospital.
The doctor came into the room after the re-evaluation and said that he didn’t find any leaks or anything wrong and thinks the pain is attributable to above normal swelling. He said he went and thoroughly flushed the area.
I’m happy to report that when Jude came back, she reported that the piercing swallowing pain was gone and was now experiencing a ‘2′ out of 10 on the pain scale (a good thing). She looks a lot better now and is just really tired from the entire 72 hour experience. We’ll see overnight/tomorrow what happens but I’m hoping that there was just some gas trapped somewhere that got released when the doctor poked around in her.
I doubt that she’s going to be released tomorrow so I’m planning to be in the illustrious ypsilanti michigan until Saturday.
So what we thought yesterday was normal gas pain from the procedure doesn’t seem to be gas related. Jude has been complaining of a sharp stabbing pain anytime that she swallowed. An ‘8′ on the 1-10 scale, ‘6′ was what she reported right after the procedure…
The x-rays taken this morning were ‘fuzzy’ (the idiotic term that the doctor used) and that they needed to take her back to the O.R to see what is going on. So we’re back to waiting and wondering and who knows what. The doctor said that theres an 80% chance it’s nothing.. if it’s not nothing he said it’s likely it’s a leak that they can resolve.
That’s pretty much all the information that I have right now and I will do my best to let the internet know what the results were and how our famour heroine is doing.
Sorry for the long delay for getting this post up but there was no internet access anywhere even close in the viscinity of the hospital.
Jude’s surgery was a SUCCESS and she is now dealing with all the fun stuff that recovery has to offer. The procedure releases CO2 into the stomach or body or something and she’s having some pretty bad gas pain. Apparently that’s normal. She’s already been out of bed once and done a lap of the floor (in record time compared to the other surgical laggards in the wing). Sorry friends, but I think Jude’s current BFF is the morphine shot button which she’s been leaning on all day (I believe we got up to 40 total today).
The plan is for some x-rays tomorrow morning to determine if there is any ‘leaking’ and then Friday she’ll be discharged and enjoy the four hour trip back home to Toronto.
I asked Jude for a comment for the internet and she responded with “ggghhhhhrrrrsslllllluuhhhhhhhh”.
Maybe I should have asked her BEFORE the morphine shot. My bad.
Thanks for all the well wishes from anyone and everyone. It was a stressful 2 1/2 hrs from when we last saw her pre-op to when the doctor finally came out to tell us that everything was ok. If you have Jude’s cellphone #, feel free to send her a well wishing txt message.
Hi I’m Dan, Jude’s boyfriend, and I’ll be updating the blog for the next few days. We’re currently at a hotel in Ypsilanti, MI awaiting the procedure tomorrow.
I just thought I’d drop in to give a timeline of how we expect things to go tomorrow:
So by 12 or 1pm eastern it should all be over and Jude can begin the recovery process of drinking thimblefuls of chicken broth and looking longingly at me while I eat steaks drizzled in bacon.
2 days! i think i’ve got all my ducks in a row. i’ll be picking up the vitamins i need in the states cause they’re a hell of a lot cheaper there. i have protein powders, blender bottles, a magic bullet… pretty well everything i need.
tomorrow i’m on clear fluids all day, meaning today is my last day with solid foods for about 3 weeks. weird. we will leave for ypsi around noon. boyfriend and mom are coming with me because they are awesome. the hospital phoned me last week telling me to report there at 8 am wed morning and that i was the second surgery of the day. this makes me happy, because i won’t have the entire day to wait around and drive myself nuts with nerves. so far i think i’ve held it together pretty ok-ish. i’m sure you might get a different story from my boyfriend who’s experienced some anxiety-related snappyness. we always take it out on the ones we hold dearest, right?
sometimes i feel like i’ve been waiting a long time for this day to come, but honestly, i can’t believe i’m only two days away. these last couple months have flown by. at this point, i just want to be in the recovery room 
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