The View From the Other Side of the Mountain

Hi friends! I know I said this in the FB post I made the other day, but I can't say thank you enough to all of you who commented, texted, called (just kidding, I don't use my phone for that), sent carrier pigeons to check up on me or have just been so encouraging and supportive. From the very beginning of this whole process, it has often felt like I needed to be ashamed of having reached a point where this surgery was my best/only option, and even though I try not to surround myself with shitty people, I still feared negativity when I went "public" with my plans. I prepared all my rebuttals and witty/snarky replies and crossed my fingers that I wouldn't sound like a bumbling idiot when someone told me I was making the wrong choice. I am so incredibly lucky, though, that I've only been met with love, support, genuine curiosity, and encouragement from everyone in my life and I don't think I can adequately express how much that means to me. So again, thank you.

So here we are, three days post-op, and I've finally got enough gumption to tell all. If you are part of a bariatric surgery community, or just for some weird reason know a lot of people who have had it and talk about it openly, you'll commonly hear people say that there's a brief period immediately following surgery where you are cursing your life choices and trying to Ctrl + Z the last 24 hours of your life. Well, I, for one... am going to tell you that THEY AIN'T NEVER LIED, and had I not been in such mind-altering pain, I probably would've had a few choice words for errybody who had any part of this whole fucking process from start to finish.

But let's start from the beginning.

On Wednesday afternoon, I got a call from the surgical staff telling me what time to report (12:15pm) and what time my surgery would be (2:15pm). TBH I was a little bummed that it wasn't going to be in the morning because, well, I am not patient (this will not be the only time that this comes up, FYI). Plus I was to be completely NPO after midnight, so that meant at LEAST 14 hours without even my measly clear liquid diet to satiate me. Plus, my in-laws came into town to help us manage things at home; letting the dog out, picking Lucas up from school, etc., and it felt a little burdensome to have them here when nothing was happening yet.

Also, there seems to be this thing where when someone can't eat, the one and only thing anyone wants to talk about is food. Lawd, I was doneski. I would seriously have eaten my own foot at that point if you put a little hot sauce on it. Around 11:30, we all left so Derek's parents could drop us off at the hospital, saving us the hassle (and cost) of parking.

We got there right around 12:15 and it took just a few minutes to get registered and checked in. Cool. Apparently calling people by their names when you're ready for them is so passe, they give everyone a little slip of paper with a number on it and you wait for them to call the number. And then your status throughout your procedure is shown up on a big screen with that number as well. Yeah, yeah, I know, blah blah HIPAA, blah blah privacy, whatever. Anyway, the waiting room was pretty full of what I quickly learned were not just waiting families, but patients waiting to be called back. I guess this is why they tell you to get there two hours early, huh? HAHAHAHAHA. -_-

We waited. And waited. And waited. 2:15 came and went. If I hadn't been so freaking nervous I probably would've gone bitch mode because I was so annoyed. It was just about 3:00pm when my na-- I mean number was called (93156 - in case you're curious, or for some reason didn't know that this is a random bit information that is locked in my brain forever) and I headed back. Derek had to wait, so it was just me and Jason Momoa (I'll get there).

This is my "Patience is not my strongest virtue" face while we waited

The Care Partner who escorted me, whose name I am blanking on at the moment, weighed me for the last time as a fat-kid with a full stomach -- 272.8, fully-dressed, but sans Jason. She led me into a pre-op room and gave me a litany of instructions I tried to absorb while simultaneously peeing my pants (figuratively, thankfully, because peeing in a cup was one of those instructions). I, of course, would be the one patient who gets the wonky gown that's missing a tie and had to jury-rig it to hide at least a sliver of my giant, bare ass, so I'm 150% sure that when she came back into the room she was wondering if I needed an adult. Like, an adultier adult. While I waited, I came to the conclusion that this hospital was very warm and I hoped to all things that this was only true in the small part of the hospital I had been through at this point. Naturally, as a lifelong fat kid, the most minimal effort makes me sweat like Donald Trump in a holding cell at Otisville, so I'm clearly thrilled about the tropical climate, right? I elegantly (HAHAHAHAno) climb on to the bed and try to arrange myself in such a way that my wonky gown setup isn't actually choking me and I'm not giving a free show to everyone on the unit, while simultaneously trying not to look like a complete dodo in front of, oh, I don't know, intelligent human beings? No such luck. So I get settled *enough*, and the Care Partner asks if I want a blanket. And because I'm sweating like I just had 20 minutes alone with Jason Momoa and am cursing the building's CLEARLY malfunctioning air conditioning, I say YES, THANK YOU and she brings me a carefully folded, and WARMED blankie. This is going swimmingly, can't you tell?

So between my Care Partner and my nurse, Jennifer, I am asked a billion questions, have all kinds of things attached to me for the purpose of clinically measuring how close to mental collapse I am, and am informed that the anesthetist, surgeon, and OR nurse will all be coming in to speak with me shortly. Cool. And then they ask me if I want Derek to come in to get my stuff. Obviously the thought of Derek carrying Jason around the hospital for hours tickles me to no end, I say yes, and they bring him in.

It was shortly after this that the actual mental collapse started to happen. Everything kind of hit me at once and I had this sudden realization that I hadn't given Lucas a hug and kiss before Derek took him to school that morning because he was letting me sleep in, and Lucas was all dressed up for picture day so I did get to see him and I *think* he said "I love you" back but I definitely didn't get a hug and had no idea that Derek put him in an outfit for photos that I NEVER would've approved of if I had been conscious and now I was about to go into surgery and I might not wake up and I will have died without a last hug and kiss from my perfect little boy and his last school picture day before his mommy died was going to be blemished by the soccer shoes he wore with tweed pants and a polo shirt and I *lost it*.

So, honestly, I really was just trying to tell Derek to tell Lucas I love him more than everything and that I always will, and to make good choices and be a good friend, but the realization of why I was saying it hit me like a sack of bricks. And of course before I could collect my marbles, my damn SURGEON came in the room and she sees me crying, asks if I'm okay and I have to find a delicate way of saying "I'm pretty sure you're going to kill me and I'm a little sad about it". So I told her I was just really nervous and afraid of not waking up and bless her heart (I've lived in Richmond too long) she told me that everything would go swimmingly and I would wake up and I would see my son later. OH, WELL IN THAT CASE...

After the rest of the cavalry made its way into and out of the room, Derek and I had a few quiet minutes to try to calm me the hell down so we turned on the TV and watched an early episode of Friends with no sound because I was too flummoxed to get the remote to work appropriately and Derek did not dare ask to figure it out himself.

And then around 3:45ish it was time to go. They let him walk with me until we got to some...door or something, I don't fucking know, and we parted ways. They wheeled me into the OR, and I had to scoot myself off of the bed and onto the table. They hooked me up to a lot of things, they talked amongst themselves about what they were doing, and I tried to think of anything else. Then, they put a mask on my face and said that it was just oxygen at the moment, so just take some deep breaths, and after a few of those they told me they were switching to the anesthesia, but keep taking those deep breaths.

And then a few hours were removed from my life and all I had to show for it was uncontrollable pain and the contents of half a tube of dermabond. I recall the clock saying it was somewhere in the 5:00 hour and I think I heard someone telling someone to "call her husband". Everything seemed to be moving really fast at this point but I remember them asking me about my pain a couple times and crying '9' and wondering why they were asking if they weren't doing anything about it. Then I realized that they tried Dilaudid first, which did nothing, and then Fentanyl, which also did nothing. So, guys, gals, and non-binary pals, my first meal post-op was two 5mg Oxycodone and some delicious ice water.

I guess it worked eventually because I drifted in and out of sleep but I do remember Derek coming in. I don't remember a whole lot of that conversation but I remember the recovery nurse saying that they hadn't assigned me to a room yet so I would likely be in recovery for a while. Derek stayed as long as they would let him, and left once the announcements were being made that visiting hours were ending in five minutes (8:00pm). After he left, I guess I just slept on and off because I remember another dose of oxycodone and then eventually they found me a room. The nurse told me they were just cleaning it up and they'd have me up there in a jiff, but that ended up being longer than a jiff should be and she apologized while she seemed to frustratedly wonder out loud where Transport was and what was taking so long. I don't recall all the details from that point but I do know that at some point they called Derek to tell him what room I had been assigned to, and around 10:15ish, she and another nurse wheeled me upstairs themselves.

I was in the Critical Care Hospital, 7th Floor, Room 106. It was so much quieter than the recovery room. I was quickly greeted by my new nurse, Randa, who flittered about connecting and disconnecting things and rechecking vitals.

I tried to finally get to sleep but had no illusions that it would happen just from my previous knowledge from Derek's hospital stays. Randa came in every hour like clockwork to check vitals and see how I was doing, though as the hours dragged on, she did these checks as quietly and unintrusively as possible. Somewhere in the 2:00-3:00 hour I woke up in awful pain again and Randa added tylenol to my regimen. At some point during Randa's shift, she and my new Care Partner, Jilyane, got me out of bed to go to the bathroom and walk a lap around the unit. I am proud to say that despite being 87.4% asleep, I did quite well, thankyouverymuch. I did one more lap a little later on with Jilyane, and was even steadier on my feet.

Lather, rinse, repeat, until shift change at.. I don't even know what time... 6:00, maybe? My new nurse was Nina, and my new CP was Ashley. It must have been a busy morning because after they initially came around for rounds, I didn't see either of them again for a while. A couple of doctors, whose names I did not know, nor do I know where they were from, came to check my incisions and stuff and told me that they were planning to discharge me around lunchtime. HOORAY! I should've asked them what time zone they meant, though...

Derek arrived after he had breakfast and took Lucas to school and I was happy for the company. We chatted a bit but mostly he just kept himself occupied while I napped. They advanced my diet from clear liquids (read: water) to full liquids (read: this didn't mean full liquids in the REAL sense; it meant full liquids as in clear liquids + protein shakes). I knew from all my pre-surgery prep that this is the diet I would leave the hospital on and would stay on until my two-week post-op appointment. I was a little bummed because for some reason I was remembering "phase 2" being a little more... inclusive... but ultimately was just glad to have anything.

The pain was okay as long as stayed on top of the meds. Since Nina hadn't come by since the first time, I hadn't had meds since... well, about 6 or 7 or so. Eventually the pain became much too much and I couldn't wait for them and had to use the call bell. I know that's what it's for, and that it wasn't a burden for me to do so, but I have always been keen to stay on my healthcare providers' good sides, and part of that is by not annoying the hell out of them. (The rest involves actually listening to what they tell me to do and asking questions if I don't understand something, but that's irrelevant here.) Besides, while I know it sounds silly now, I didn't want to give off the impression that I was just trying to load up on Oxy.

So anyway, the pain got bad enough that all i could do was cry. Derek held my hand while I wailed and pushed the call button for me a second time when they didn't come the first time and I couldn't just hold on anymore. It has been hard to explain the pain. Sometimes the worst pain was 100% gas pain, no two ways about it. But then the pain became centralized around the largest incision - the one that had to stretch the most to pull my stomach out of - which of course made sense, but when I thought about it more, the pain kind of sat either directly south of that incision or in-between the largest one and the one to the right of it. It was weird. Sometimes it felt like soreness, but other times it felt like... pulling, maybe? I attributed it to gravity because it was the worst when I tried to walk or sit up or, like, move.

This post is getting long (shocker) so I'll Cliff's Notes the rest: I walked another lap with Derek and NO walker, which was awesome; I sat in the chair in the room for a while which was nice until I tried to get out of it, and eventually was discharged around 4:45pm. Ya know, lunchtime.

This of course happened to be right around the time my last dose of meds wore off, so the ride home from downtown Richmond was about as pleasant as you would imagine. Thankfully I was smart enough, though, to have Jason to protect me and shield me from the brunt of the journey. We stopped to pick up Lucas from school on the way home and despite how much pain I was in, it was such a relief to see him again and hear him cry "Mommy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" when he saw that I was in the car. He told me he missed me and asked me if my tummy was still big. (We told him that mommy was going to the hospital because a doctor was going to make mommy's tummy smaller so that she wouldn't be able to eat as much anymore and then I could get healthy and run around and play games with him more.) I told him no, that it's not big anymore, but that I had some big booboos where they cut it out and they hurt a lot, and we talked about how we'd have to be super gentle around Mommy's tummy for a little while, and we assigned him to the role of Special Helper and Protector from Jumpy Puppies.

The time since I've been home has gotten progressively better. That first night, I was miserable. Not only could I not get the pain under control, but I am NOT a back-sleeper, and unfortunately had no choice. I was told that I was allowed to sleep on either side if I wanted to, and ohhhhh did I want to, but neither side was tenable with the amount of pain I was in, much less comfortable. I needed a lot of help from Derek that night to figure out a system and just make sure I had whatever I needed. I did wake up in pain a few times, but otherwise just couldn't sleep because I was uncomfortable.

During the day Saturday, I mostly kept to myself in our bedroom because all of the things I needed -- bed, bathroom, beverage, are on the top level of our house, and I had not learned to love stairs by that point. The in-laws took Lucas out for a while, and then when they got back, Derek went to get some groceries and pick up a few extra things for me that were recommended in my discharge paperwork, like Gas-X for the INTENSE FUCKING GAS PAINS and lidocaine patches to dull the pain of the incisions, plus pick up a couple additional prescriptions that had been called in.

Today has been more or less the same but I have more of a rhythm now and have figured out the best way(s) to get in and out of bed or a chair, and on/off the toilet, and things are doing much better. The pain hasn't been nearly as bad as it was, but the gas pain is still pretty intense. I did, however, find a comfortable way to sleep on my side last night (which involved building Fort Knox around myself out of pillows and pillow-like items, sorry Derek) which allowed me to sleep for much more solid chunks of time. Hooray. I woke up in the middle of the night with what I can only describe as violent hunger pain? I also felt like I had to puke and as I suspected, my blood sugar was low. So at 4:00am, I had a popsicle and a new dose of pain meds and went back to sleep until it was actually time to wake up.

In other awesome news for the day, I finally farted! WOOHOO! I cannot think of a single situation where I would so enthusiastically share this with everyone in the world, but goddammit, it is a special occasion! By the time I write this, I've passed gas at least 8 times or so. Yay! I still have some gas pain, but I felt it move, and now that I know I can get it out, I am less stressed about it. I still have the gravity pain when I stand up or sit up in certain positions, and I don't really think there's anything I can do about that.

My incisions all look great, and only the big one is bruising at this point. Weirdly, though, i do have a bruise on my side that's kind of in between two other incisions, but not close enough to either to be from that particular incision. Weird. Aside from the big one, none of the other incisions have hurt at all, and so far (I am knocking on all the wood) they aren't itchy yet. I know it's coming, though, so I'm bracing myself. I'm no stranger to uncontrollable itchiness, though, and while it sucks, I'd rather be itchy than bloated and doped up on pain meds. Which isn't even an accurate statement because aside from the 3.5 hours or so that the pain is dulled, i haven't noticed any real effects from the oxy at all. Maybe a little bit of drowsiness, but let's be real here, I'm fucking tired all the time so it might not be fair to pin it on Opie.

Aside from physical recovery, I don't think it really feels real yet. I mean, obviously I am already making sure I'm taking much smaller sips and spacing them out more, and I'm noticing the cues when i have taken too big of a sip, etc., but since I'm still essentially on the same diet I was pre-op, it doesn't feel a whole lot different. The biggest change is that Derek has gone back to eating like a normal human because I flatly refused to let him keep up with me post-op. When I first started this process and told him I needed his support to keep me from failing, he promised me that he would be beside me every step of the way and vowed to do all of the pre-op dieting and post-op eating the same way I was doing it. At the time it sounded completely bonkers, but it was so far off that it wasn't worth arguing about. I am incredibly grateful that he was willing to do the pre-op diet with me, even though he lost more weight than I did, because I can honestly say I don't know how committed I would've remained if my husband and son went on with their normal meal choices while I gave it all up. But post-op? No way, dude. The post-op phases (which I'll talk about later cuz I am exhausted and bored of myself at this point so I'll spare you all) are designed specifically for recovery from this surgery, not for weight loss - that's just a happy byproduct. It would be unhealthy for him to continue eating this way for literally no reason. His argument was that he made a promise, and he felt horrible about not keeping it. So, we had a long talk about it sometime last week or so, and we agreed that in lieu of keeping the promise to the letter, the promise post-op was to keep up with me in terms of changing our lifestyle and our eating habits together, so that we could both maintain weight loss and set a better, more positive example for Lucas. And while I'm certainly jealous that he has had the glorious fortune of being able to resume CHEWING his food, I do not at all hold it against him or see it as a betrayal. While his parents were here, they took Lucas to a few different fast food places, and Derek either stayed here with me and didn't get anything, or he ate quite possibly exactly what I would've eaten if I was at that stage yet. AKA, the healthy choice, the least likely to derail all my progress and make the whole debacle a useless waste of time and sugar-free jello. I am proud of him, because promises aside, he has struggled with food choices and eating addictions the same way that I have, and I know that being faced with difficult choices and still making the right one is not an easy thing to do. I mean, shit, I literally just had my stomach cut out in an attempt to force me to not make those shitty choices. As my diet progresses and I get back to eating "normal" food, I am really looking forward to Derek and I teaming up to find new ways to approach eating, both at home and in restaurants.

We are both really excited to start this "new life" (ugh, gag me with a fork) and get the weight off and get healthy.

...andplusalso, the savings from not eating out as much or spending like 1/3 of what we usually do at a restaurant is certainly further motivation.

Thanks for reading the Great Wall of Update -- stay tuned for the next one.

P.S.: I have a throw pillow with Jason Momoa's head on it. I was told long ago that hugging a pillow when you cough, or get in/out of chairs/beds was super helpful from a pain standpoint. So naturally, when faced with the choice of just using a boring old hospital pillow or getting snuggly with Jason.... I went with the latter. Duh. FWIW, he has been a great emotional support but his abdominal support has been lackluster at best. I'll have to have a chat with him about that. I got a great many compliments about him while I was in the hospital, though.

P.P.S: Whenever I'm in pain and need to distract myself, I picture Derek roaming the halls of the hospital with Jason Momoa, and try not to chuckle... because it hurts.

CIAO, FRIENDS!