Okay, let’s back track a bit. Surgery was schedule for 2pm on Friday afternoon, which meant I was allowed to sleep at the lodge with Matt on Thursday night. Thank goodness! We both got a restful sleep and were ready for Friday. They still wanted me to be NPO at midnight which I asked the anesthesiologist about at my pre-anesthesia appointment on Thursday. She told me what I already know…technically it’s no solids 6 hours before and no clears 2 hours before. So my grand plan was to eat breakfast in the morning and then be NPO. Well, I woke up Friday morning second guessing this grand plan because I know how it works in the OR. There is always a chance they would want to take me sooner if there’s an opening in the schedule and the docs are available. And I did not want to be the nurse patient who didn’t listen to instructions holding up the procedure. So I just took some sips of water and called it a day. In the morning I kept thinking “ugh, being NPO sucks” and then it dawned on me. I have been forcing myself to eat every 2 hours and drink all day long for nearly 8 months now. And now they are giving me permission to stop it all for half a day and I’m complaining about it. What was I thinking? This was a dream! So I thoroughly enjoyed not having to eat or drink anything for several hours. My mind didn’t have to be preoccupied with what I should be drinking or what my next meal was going to be. I kind of enjoyed just doing nothing. Matt on the other hand was getting a bit antsy, so I kept sending him to do little things went once in a while. Then, I was starting to think things like “what are we doing here? I feel great.” My mind goes to crazy places people. But I kept reminding myself we were there for a reason we were going to figure out what was going on. Fast forward to pre-op time. We’re sitting in pre-op talking with the anesthesiologists and nurses when around the corner comes my surgeon, Dr Davis. You see, his wife just had their third baby on Tuesday morning and he was supposed to be at home with his family, not at the hospital with us. So, if you know me at all you can imagine I immediately got teary eyed. All the nerves of having a surgeon I don’t really know, but trusted because Dr Davis trusts him, just melted away. All the doubts of being there…gone. He told us he saw a spot on my CT, which I had the day prior, that looked suspicious for probably causing my pain. So I felt very good going in to surgery that we were going to figure this out and things will be great.
Surgery went very well. He found the spot he had seen on the CT. He thought it was going to be a lot worse but ultimately it was an adhesion that attached two parts of my small bowel, which he said could definitely be causing intermittent partial small bowel obstructions. Which could definitely have been causing my pain. So he got rid of that and fixed my umbilical hernia. I stayed admitted at NIH for a couple of nights just to make sure my pain was under control before flying back home. Other than being sore, it’s been easy peasy compared to my gastrectomy. On Sunday, I was feeling so good we went sight seeing in DC for a few hours. Visited a couple museums we hadn’t been to before. All in the pouring rain. We had a good size umbrella to share but boy oh boy we did not have the right shoes. By the end of the few hours our shoes were soaking wet and we were both ready to get back to the hotel to dry of and warm up.
Flight home went by fast. Matt was flying standby again, thanks to my aunt. And he got on the flight! Woohoo! He was literally the last person the the plane. And to make things better, the seat next to me was empty. So anyway, flight was good. And we are so glad to be home again. The last week has been quite the whirlwind. So now it’s time to rest and heal. Which is going to be very challenging for me for 6 weeks! I’m hoping to get some quiet projects done that I did not have the energy to do when I was off 8 weeks with the original surgery. Like try to get a couple of my annual photos books complete that I’m super behind on. I’m still working on 2016’s!
Anyway, I feel like rambling now. So, till next time.
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