- back from surgery -

[Guest guest]

Dear ,

Thanks for sharing all the details of your surgery. I am sorry that it was such an ordeal! The vein stuff sounds terrible! After my last hospital experience I had a huge hematoma from the iv and it was painful and took forever to go away.

I am so glad that you arenow safe and sound and feeling better. Try to take it easy. I know that when you are used to being active it's hard to not be able to do stuff but you have to take care of yourself and lima bean. It won't be too long before you are up and about again. I am sorry about the scary incident - that kind of stuff sucks. I remember when I was pregnant that my cat lept onto my belly and I just freaked out.

Good luck with your appointment tomorrow - let us know how it goes.

Surgery details...very long.....

Hi all! I am feeling much better now and it doesn't hurt quite as much to sit anymore so I figured I'd better get on here and give you the details. I went in at 10:30 and was done at 11:30. I was put to sleep for the procedure and since I have a low tolerance for morphine (I usually puke) they gave my a spinal block before I woke up to help with the pain. I ended up having to have a spinal patch the next day because everytime I got up I would practically faint my head hurt so bad. They took some blood from my hand and put it in my back and it was an instant fix. Unfortunately my vein rolled and instead of trying again they just poked around until they found it again. So even though I had surgery 12 days ago my whole hand and about 3 inches below my wrist are still black and green from the bruise. Also, my IV backed up because it went through the vein so now I have a huge lump on the other arm just below the wrist. (That lump hurt worse than my incision on some days!) They took my staples out before I left on the 4th day. My bladder wouldn't wake up from the spinal block so every time I painfully got out of bed to go to the bathroom was horrible because I couldn't pee. So I had a catheter most of the time I was there. I didn't complain though because that meant I didn't have to get up. I have cried just about every day since the surgery. NOt an all day thing but at least once a day. I am not use to not being able to do anything. I couldn't cry too hard or laugh or sneeze or cough cuz it hurt too bad. Now it just hurts to sneeze and laugh. It's hard not to be able to do laundry and dishes and vacuum. We had a little incident with my daughter who is almost 8. I was asleep on the couch and she came to give me a kiss and used her elbow to prop herself up right on my stomach. She is not a little girl either. She is in the 98th percentile for height and weight. It was scary - we both freaked out but it's all good now. I go to the doctor tomorrow morning for my follow up. We'll see what she says. The incision looks really good. It is so big (practically hip to hip) and itches like crazy and it is in such an akward place that it does hurt to do certain things but over all I am doing very well. Sorry this is so jumbled and back and forth but it's alot of information! Thanks to everyone for their support and advice! Abbie 9/10/95 7/19/98DA 5/31/00Lima Bean EDD 2/16/04