All along, I had been managing my pain with one pill, and it was doing its job quite well. But last night I slept through my 1:00 AM dose and could definitely tell this morning that the pain was there. I popped 2 pills after lunch to try and get it back under control, but learned that two pills gave me a bit of a buzz. Not fun.
I was up at 7:30 this morning and managed to stay out of bed all the way until 11:30, which was good. Being up and around is definitely better than spending the day in bed.
I continue to do laps around the house (inside, of course) and this morning I added the stairs to the basement to my route. That took a little more effort and energy, and by midday I was ready to go horizontal for a while.
A little nap in early afternoon and I was ready for my first visitors by 3:30 PM. It was good to spend some time with them again.
Dinner tonight was more of the homemade soup that was delivered by my neighbors--thanks! My appetite is slowly getting better with each day and I'm beginning to return to a better eating pattern/schedule. Part of the reason that it's been so slow to return is the bloating after the surgery.
When they poke holes in you for the robot arms to enter your body, they fill you will gas to essentially inflate you to get your body wall away from where they're doing the surgery. When they're done, they sew you back up and some of that gas is trapped inside you. Eventually, it filters its way into your digestive tract and causes a lot of pressure. There's really no room for food.
The surgeon told me to expect to be bloated the first 3-4 days after the surgery, and he was right. The first two days, I was in agony from the gas pressure--it caused more pain than the incisions did. For biological reasons unbeknowst to me, getting rid of the gas in those first days is very difficult. (You remember the old joke, "How do you spell relief? F-A-R-T"??) It's amazing how expelling that gas made my comfort level go way up. The new simple joys in life... :-)
I still find it difficult to sit for any extended periods of time, so I'm actually standing at the kitchen counter typing this out on my laptop. It's getting better, and the more I'm up and about, the more it will improve.
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When I started this blog, I was just using it to vent and keep people in the loop on what was happening. But, over the last 60 days, I've viewed this as an educational tool as well. It's certainly not meant to replace the advice of proper medical personnel, but I hope that it gives others going through this insight from one patient's perspective. It's the silver lining in this cloud.
So keeping with that educational theme, you may start to see more very detailed and very graphic descriptions of what I'm experiencing after surgery. I'll identify those descriptions in advance to allow those who don't want to know to have the opportunity to skip reading that part of the post.
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So that's it for this Saturday night. Time for my next dose of Percocet.
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