Our Beautifully Ordinary Life

Y’all know the drill. No food or water after midnight (I ate a gigantic peanut butter sandwich at 11:55PM and downed a couple of big glasses of water), no lotion or makeup, remove all nail polish and piercings, and so on. All regulations were complied with, bags were packed, and we were on our way by 10AM to drop Ava at daycare in order to be at the hospital by 10:30AM for a surgery time of 1PM. Ava was totally feeling the stress vibe and I was on the verge of tears so J ripped her out of my arms (almost literally) and took her in – with her little arms outstretched and reaching for me while I got all weepy in the car. We made it to the hospital just barely on time only to discover that I’d left my ID at home. Fortunately the check in nurse didn’t care since they had one on file and she said nobody in their right mind would try to scam their way in to undergo major surgery anyway.

We waited for ages in the waiting room and again in the tiny cubby they stuff you into to wait to be carted back to surgery. Apparently they weren’t too worried about HIPAA violations back there ’cause I could tell you far too much information about the gentleman who was in the cubby next to mine – name, age, diagnosis, blood type, surgery, address, and more. I was there so long that J was getting ready to find someone since they’d obviously forgotten about me when my anesthesiologist showed up cracking bad jokes (something about him never having anyone wake up dead and then chortling like he didn’t tell this same joke to every single patient he has) and with an explanation that the surgery prior to mine ran longer than expected. I got the ‘these are all the things that can go wrong’ speech from both him and my surgeon but by this time I’m contemplating gnawing on the IV bag for nourishment since I was now at 14 hours and counting from last food or liquid consumption and I would have agreed to anything so they would stop talking and get started. Bad joke doc gave me drugs (which made me appreciate his jokes much more) and I happily waved J off to go nosh on some hospital food while I went under the fancy robot knives – albeit with an understanding that if the endo was too bad then they may have to do a regular abdominal hysterectomy. The surgery was estimated to take about 3 hours.

He did it in 2. Everything went so much smoother than he’d anticipated and he said I was a perfect candidate for the DaVinci assisted since it allowed him a magnified view of all the endo that was in there. He removed a large band of scar tissue, a number of adhesions (some of which had stuck my colon to the abdominal wall), and excised a ton of endo after he’d removed the uterus – most of this was found in the harder to reach places near the bladder which makes sense considering I’d just had surgery in April. He also removed my problematic right ovary but left the other one since it appeared to be unaffected and he knew how strongly I felt about keeping it if there was any way possible in order to avoid hormone replacement therapy. Oh yeah, and the cervix too. I couldn’t see any reason to keep it and after my (unfounded) scare last year with a questionable pap test I had no qualms about letting that go, too. Recovery room was a breeze once they brought me some ice chips and a couple of those super warm blankets and I was carted off to my room soon thereafter.

I had a private room (thank heavens) and I think J was already in there when I arrived. Or maybe not. What can I say? I was higher than a kite so my recall is a little foggy. I do know he had to track down my bag o’ stuff that had gone missing and he had the foresight to ferret me out some ginger ale before heading out to pick Ava up and take her to our friends’ house for the evening so he could come back and make sure I was good and settled for the night. Ava did fine with our friends – making a new best friend of their teenage daughter. Even though Ava is in daycare for about 6 hours a day we almost never leave her any other time so I was worried about this. For no reason, apparently.

J came back (with crackers – YAY!) and hung out for a couple of hours, most of which we spent celebrating the fact that I was alive by trying to figure out how to turn off the TV with the provided remote. I was convinced it was me (that drug thing again) but neither he or the evening nurse could make it work either. No matter, I had my iPhone with music, books, and J brought my netbook in case I felt like blog reading and commenting under the influence – which I would have except they had a net nanny type of program on their wireless and I couldn’t access anything I normally read…including my own. Who knew I was classed under objectionable content?

Other than the typical annoyances associated with a hospital stay (you know, where the nurse comes into the room 5 seconds after you finally fall asleep to wake you for a blood pressure or something) it wasn’t a bad experience. The (very good) pain medication was free flowing so pain never went above a 6-7 on the pain scale and my night nurse was an absolute angel except when she let my IV bag run dry and the alarms went off scaring the heck out of me. Seriously – an angel. It amazes me how much nurses do, all the while maintaining a pleasant and positive attitude, with so little recognition.

Still more later…

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