Second Surgery

I must say, I'm very thankful that most of this class is done online on a blog!!

I had to go to the ER at Sky Ridge Hospital in an ambulance last Wednesday (Valentine's Day) for severe pain near my hernia repair. A CAT scan was unable to make a determination, so I was sent home with yet more Percocet. On Friday, February 16th, I went to my plastic surgery appointment, as scheduled, so my surgeon could check on the progress of my scar revision. He was not happy with the amount of pain I was in, so he arranged for me to see my general surgeon who had done my hernia repair. She was not thrilled with the amount of pain I was in - telling me that it was not normal. She decided to admit me to St. Joe's. I'm glad one of my sister's was with me - I was not prepared to be admitted to the hospital, and was glad she had driven me to my appointment. She ended up taking my wallet and jewelry home with her.... only after staying with me in my room while I went through the admission process with lots of tears. I didn't want to be in the hospital, and certainly didn't want to spend the weekend without having a definite reason for being there.

Over the weekend I was "lucky" enough to have PCA Morphine (two milligrams every eight minutes) that managed most of my pain. Trust me, I was watching the clock most of the time!! Another CAT Scan didn't find anything definitive. One of the doctors (I think I saw three different ones over the weekend) told me that on Monday that they would have an Interventional Radiologist take a long, thin needle and go in to see if they could aspirate what looked to be a combination of an air and liquid pocket near the hernia. On Monday, I was told that it had been decided to NOT do the needle aspirate, and instead my general surgeon would perform surgery on me on Tuesday morning. Oh great....

Surgery went ok, and when I woke up, I was told that they had found a large seroma that had to be removed. I must say, the pain was much different! I still had the two milligrams of morphine every eight minutes though!

I was discharged from the hospital Wednesday, February 21st, (with more Percocet) and per doctor's orders am not able to go back to work or school until Monday, February 26th. I'm doing ok, very sore, but with much less pain than I was having last week. I have bruises up and down both arms from the nurses trying to get an IV put in me - at last count, I think there are twelve needle stick marks.

While I hated spending so much time in the hospital, and still have moments of being entirely pissed off about it, logic comes creeping back, and I realize that it was the best place for me. The seroma could have ruptured, and then things would have gotten really ugly, very quickly!