Re: Re: Update Post Surgery - Day 4

[Guest guest]

On Feb 14, 2006, at 12:46 PM, kip_pm wrote:

> Suzanne,

>

> Your Day-4 report is like a carbon-copy of my first few days! Sounds

> like you're well on your way to feeling better- hang in there!

>

> I have had a couple of other surgeries in my life (RT. Inguinal

> Hernia & LT. Varicocele), and upon waking from both of those I felt

> like a million bucks- almost high as a kite, actually. Only later

> did the pain set in, with normal healing to follow. When I woke up

> from the Adrenalectomy, however, I felt absolutely dismal. I was

> almost beside myself at how terrible I felt.

Me too. I demanded toradol IV-IM, as I remembered from pharmo study it

had been developed for lower body pain. I'm surprised I could

remember that much. It took them awhile to get the order, but then I

was OK.

> I couldn't even talk

> for the first hour or two from the intubation tube they had inserted

> down my throat, and I was so groggy that I felt like I was

> struggling for my life to stay awake. Every time I started to slip

> back into an unconscious state, the alarms on all the monitors

> attached to me would start going off, and the nurse would

> shout " take a deep breath, Kip! " .

Anesthesia can make breathing hard. . .

> I would take a breath, then the

> alarms would stop- until the next time it happened. This went on for

> an hour or two. At one point, my immediate family was let in to see

> me & they asked me a bunch of questions. I couldn't speak too well

> to answer them, and a huge wave of nausea came over me. The nurse

> reclined my bed a bit more and gave me a shot of magnesium (not sure

> what that was for).

" the missing electrolyte " gets burned up fast when the body is saying

" infection alert. " MG's other functions can get impaired. . .

> I almost passed out a couple of time, too. The

> catheter took me by surprise, as well, along with the compresion

> cuffs, which felt weird but didn't hurt or anything. Basically, you

> feel like you've been through a war, of sorts.

" Basically, " my surgeon intoned with some gallows humor he knew I liked

in the recovery room, " you have been shot four times in the right

abdominal flank with a .32 caliber bullets, only were lucky not to have

them hit anything crucial. " Laporoscopic war. I told him I hoped

tubal navigating his skill was more than luck. The chief professor

laughed with a micro-flash of uneasiness.

All during the thing I was imagining the UC surgical residents

and interns practicing. I was glad to have the experienced " A-team. "

Dave