Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Surgery Day

Today is the first day I have ever had surgery.  That is, if you don't count my wisdom teeth being removed.  I don't. Mostly because that happened three days before Thanksgiving my freshman year of college and I just don't like to think about it. Let's have a moment of silence for all that food I didn't get to eat. 


::silence::


Ok, so today I got to go to the hospital bright and early at 7:30. The surgery was scheduled for 9:30. I was actually feeling pretty calm this morning, so I need to thank you all for thinking of me and sending good vibrations my way. So thank you!


They brought me back to the pre-op room, asked me tons of questions and got the IV in. It only took 4 tries. Sigh. My veins really suck. They started using a numbing agent so they could dig around more to try and find veins after they went in. They also used very big needles. So unfortunately I look like a crack addict.  For reference, it was bigger than this:




After they got the IV in and the anesthesiologist (thank you google for helping me spell this correctly) came in to check me out, they gave me the "good stuff". The "good stuff" didn't really do much though and since I was missing grad school to be at the surgery today I decided to pull out some homework while I waited.
Nothing is going to hold me back from reading dense articles and answering equally dense questions about them!

It was a nice distraction for Dan and I to talk about my homework while I was waiting to be called back into surgery. I made sure he checked it  just in case the "happy juice" was doing more than I thought!

Dr. Brockenbrough (we love saying his name really fast) came in and discussed the surgery with us. It wasn't going to be very long and he would talk to Dan after it was over. We expressed concern that my lymph node on my neck had gotten considerable bigger last week and was now easy to see. He stated he would still only take out one since that was all he needed and not to worry about the size.

After that, I was ready to go!

They wheeled me into surgery after I kissed Dan goodbye and I realized that maybe the "happy juice" was working some. If I hadn't been on the juice I probably would have run screaming in to the night! The surgery room looked just like they did in TV shows with big lights, a tiny bed and machines everywhere! It was scary looking. Luckily the juice was keeping me calm and I started focusing on a tough question I had to answer for my grad school homework and tried figuring it out as they hooked me up to all these machines and gave me oxygen.

Then a nice man said he would put me to sleep now, and he did just that! I woke up an hour later in the recovery room with a nice nurse asking if I wanted ice chips. I remembered I had a dream I really wanted to remember but after she asked me about ice chips I immediately forgot what it was about. Oh well.

I moved out of recovery back to my room and they got Dan. I was pretty alert and not nauseous so we were out of there within the hour which was nice.
They gave me Vicodin which was very nice too, but after taking one on the way home I was not impressed. It just made me too sleepy and loopy so I'll stick with Ibuprofen for now.

All the nurses and even Dan told me how good the cut look on my neck. They used glue to close the incision since it will heal easier and cleaner than stitches. Since everyone told me it looked so good, I believed them....until I looked in the mirror....
Ouch!

I guess it looks ok, but man what does BAD look like then??? I will be wearing some scarves this week and fancy wardrobe choices to avoid any weird looks. Besides the lovely scar memento for the day I also got one of these:



I love to get new bracelets



All in all a lot better than we thought it would be. Easy peasy really. Not that I am looking forward to another surgery, but it wasn't that bad.

By Thursday we are hoping for the results when we see the oncologist. For now it is back to grad school!


1 comment:

  1. Congratulations! Sounds like you did awesome.

    ReplyDelete