Saturday, July 28, 2012

Day 4 - on the up?

I'll be honest, the last few days I have been toeing the line between rock bottom and beyond rock bottom.  Finally this afternoon I feel tiny bits of my old, healed self returning.....and it's awesome.  I was able to slurp some cream of chicken soup, that in itself felt incredible.  I did  not spend the entire day in bed feeling sorry for myself, either.  Been drinking lots and lots of water and clear Ensure, even on top of the nausea . I have quit my pain meds.  They weren't doing much for me at all and now I'm just using ibuprofen, which has helped intensely with my throat pain.  Day 4 has been a great day for me, trust me I needed a great day :) 
So about my surgery day...
I arrived at the hospital at 5:45 am and we were registered and then taken up to the surgery center.  I was weighed, given another pregnancy test, changed into my gown, had a cry in the bathroom and then was given an IV.  My doctors came out in their scrubs at that point and chatted with us about what they were going to do, made some jokes (i appreciated that), apologized about putting the surgery off for that week (he really was sick) and said they would see me soon.  I was taken into another room and put on a bed and covered with a warm blanket.  The anesthesiologist came in and introduced himself, asked about prior surgeries and my reaction to drugs.  I wished I would have told him to pump up the anti-nauseous medicine, but who knew it would have gotten as bad as it did.  Then they told me they were ready to take me to surgery and off we went.  Now this is where I had hoped I would have gone under, but instead i was wheeled to the cold, scary surgery room, transfered to the table and forced to watch everyone wandering around, getting utensils out, etc.  Not exactly something I would have signed up for.  I was told to use the Afrin nose spray to "get things moving in there", laid back down and he said I would be asleep within a minute, and I was.  Surgery took almost three hours, it went actually shorter than expected.  (I had the 2 piece Le Forte and they also expanded my palate via bone graft.) 
Anyways, before waking up or I guess while I was coming to, the world went from complete blackness to a dream of my husband and daughter playing on the swingset.  It was quite nice.
First thing I noticed as I woke up, I could totally breathe, in fact my nose had never been so clear.  Definite plus, right?  We all worry about not being able to breathe, so check that one off the list.  The nausea was next in line.  I want to be honest here and not scare anybody, but it was bad.  I didn't throw up then because I was scared to with the splint in my mouth.  They wheeled me to my room and i had to have them stop because i almost got sick again.  The next few hours were also not fun.  My husband of course wanted me to eat almost immediately and they brought in the soft food lunch, whatever that was.  I was so hungry i gave some yogurt a try and found out very immediately that food needed to be in liquid form. I choked on it and gave up.  We requested a protein shake like Ensure but it didn't arrive until 7PM because it's actually a restricted food unless you have a special order for it.  Really?  For a jaw surgery patient?  That was just the beginning of our problems with the hospital.  I was starving.  They brought 1 Ensure and that was all I would get for the 24 hours I was there. 
The nurses were ok, but I felt they had a hard time figuring out what to do for me.  This clearly is not a procedure that they see enough of.  so that's about it for now.  I am so swollen and disgusting today!  Definitely worse than yesterday.  Hoping the motrin will start to help that. 
Hope you're feeling better, Rosa!
have a good night all
erin

1 comment:

  1. oh my gosh I completely empathise with EVERYTHING you said! I've been having real problems with sickness too:( last night was my first night out of hospital and without anti emetics and I got so sick I had to cut my bands and I was sick all night and in the morning. I got more bands on today and I'm feeling not too bad right now! I so agree with what you said about the set up of the hospital wards. I struggled with that so much, they got really frustrated with me asking for things, and were not able to help me learn how to use the syringes and things. One guy actually said he thought I was being uptight, when actually I was just in agony!! so annoying but I'm so glad to be home now:) I've stopped taking codiene/tramadol too, it was making me sick and have hallucinations and it's ok because I can actually get by with paracetamol!! So thats an improvememnt. I hope you continue to feel better Erin, it's so useful having someone at exactly the same stage as me and compare our experiences. It makes you feel way less alone with it! I felt very alone with it in the hospital especially as the majority of the staff (especially the nightstaff) had no idea what I was going through! sending lots of love xoxox

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