Obesity Surgery WP Blog

Hi, I am now post op so this message is for James and others wondering about the
first days.. Surgery was on Nov.18. I arrived at the hospital 2 hours early as
requested and and they rushed thru all the pre op stuff ( wt, pee,blood work,
meet the docs, start the iv and off they wheeled me an hour early which was a
blessing, no time to change my mind. lol. As I was going down the hall I felt a
little stoned and asked the anesthetist if he gave me something already . He
said yes and I don’t remember getting into the OR.
I do remember waking from a deep sleep by pain in the recovery room. Moaning
helped and it attracted the recovery room nurse who had a syringe ready and I
was out cold again. I guess I went to my room ~2 hours later and awoke long
enough for someone to explain about the PCA pump and that I would need to get up
soon.
I appreciated there being a clock on the wall so I could check the time. Next
time I awoke it was cause my back ached and so did my bladder so I rang and told
the nurse I wanted to get up and she was surprised-didn’t expect me to surface

for a few more hours. That was a trip, I’ve never been so helpless. Just sit
the bed up and move slow and splinting by belly with my hands worked better than
the pillow. I was pleasantly surprised to not be dizzy.
Ater voiding, I went for a walk with a tech and then back to bed for some more
deep sleep. I felt like I was so sleep deprived, I just needed 2 days to catch
up. LOL. I had an NG tube for 20 hours and it didn’t bother me at all. At the
end of my walk I got the heaving feeling like I was going to lose my gastric
juices and as soon as the NG got plugged back it , that frightening feeling was
instantly gone. When it came out in the am I was nervous about nausea but it
did’t happen again.
My only complication was that my veins did not like the meds and I had 4 iv’s in
3 days. When my IV went interstitial or plugged those 3 times, I couldn’t get
my pain meds till it was restarted and 2 of those times involved tears. My gap
w/o meds was longer than usual as I don’t have easy veins to access so I needed
to wait for a specialist. When my IV was working my pain management was great.
On day2 I started on water, one of those little medicine cups /hr. And later
that day I spiked my water with juice. It felt good to have fluids going down
but I felt full after 1. Now I can take 2 gulps at a time!
I left the hospital on day 3, (wanted to go after 2 but got a temp and was not
up to it.) and went straight to the airport since I was from out of town. I
am 5 days post now and my staples are pulling but I am up alot, am enjoying miso
soup, and catching up on videos. Only 1 pain pill today! Thanks for all your
help and encouragement Jeny. Nice to meet you at the hospital Mikaila and
Cyndee. Hope this info is helpful James and any other pre ops out there.

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