The day of surgery arrives
When I woke up on the 30th I was not in a good way. For starters I had planned to wake up at 5am which is hard to do for someone that is completely not a morning person, yet I had been waking up constantly through the night afraid I would miss my alarm. In the end I actually properly woke up at 4:45 and just decided to go with it.
Before you go into hospital for a surgery you are expected to come in showered clean and ready to go. Since I had a feeling my hair would not be getting washed for a good few days post surgery I must have super duper deep cleaned it about three times that morning. It seems a silly thing to be concerned about right before going into surgery but I was so unbelievably worried about my hair. I know a lot of people loose a lot of hair in the year following gastric surgeries and it had been playing on my mind a lot. In my mind my hair had always been one of my better physical attributes so it became something I was fixated on protecting.
Luckily I have an incredible hairdresser who has been helping pre load my hair up with nutrients galore and will help me along the way.
I could tell even before we left in the morning (myself, my husband and my mum) to make the trip over to the hospital that I was getting nervous if for no other reason than the sheer number of nervous bathroom breaks I had to make. It was annoying at the time, but honestly, given how difficult things were post surgery (oh god the difficultlies) I really should have been savouring the ease, and privacy, of my bathroom moments.
Traveling as early as we were we arrived at the hospital easily on time for my 6:30am admission time. This was my first time having any type of surgery or hospital stay through a private hospital so it was actually sort of odd. Knowing that they were expecting me it felt sort of like checking in at a hotel rather than being admitting to a hospital, and that’s basically what it was. You arrive, receive paperwork that needs to be checked over and signed, pre pay your massive bill and wait to be called up.
I can tell you that my nerves started racketing up even higher at this point. Thank god I had mum and Rob’s hands to hold.
I already knew I was the first surgery of the day so the wait wasn’t long. We were greeted by a lovely nurse, taken through to the pre op rooms and that’s when it all became even more real for me.
I had a final weigh in and found I had lost a bit more weigh from the day before so had officially dropped just over 10kgs prior to surgery. The nurse warned me I would be meeting with several people prior to surgery and would be asked a lot of the same questions over and over again. I would come to find in the following days that I questioned why my parents gave me so many middle names after about the 800th time I repeated them all.
By this point I was changed into my theatre gown, some hospital socks (with non stick bottom surfaces) and some incredibly stylish paper underpants. I was cutting some serious style trends let me tell you.
I was also getting very scared.
The shaking had started quite a bit at this time. In the way I normally I do did my best to mask it with my usual brand of jokes and self deprecating humor but the truth was, I was incredibly scared. This was one of the biggest, most nerve-wracking experiences I had ever willingly submitted myself to.
By the time my leg cuffs were put on me and Gemma the wonderful anesthesia tech had given me a final check it was time to say goodbye to Rob and mum and then walk my way into the operating theatre.
Possibly because I watch way too much tv the thought had never occurred to me that I would actually walk myself into theatre? I thought you got wheeled in already on a hospital bed. TV lied to me!
That first moment seeing the operating room was so scary. There were a lot of people, a lot of terrifying looking instruments and that bed right in the middle of the room where I would be. When they got me settled on the bed and I looked up seeing that huge light over my head I just started crying. And then apologizing for crying, which made me cry more. I told them I was scared, but that it wasn’t a reflection on my beliefs of their skills, it was just me grasping the gravity of what I was doing. I’ve never been so grateful for the nurse that held my hand, told me that tears didn’t make me any less brave and that all of their sole jobs were to see that I was ok.
That was when it was time for my awesome anesthetist Dr Harper went to put the first line in. At the best of time my veins aren’t great but after 8 hours with no water at all they were tricky. The first one on the inside of my elbow failed but after I helped by offering to clench my fist the first line on the back of my left hand finally took.
I was then given an oxygen mask to breath from and that was my last memory.
Waking up in recovery was a very bizarre feeling. For starters there were two lines in me, one now in each hand and as I would come to find bruises from other lines in several other points of my body.
Over a week later and I still have the bruises.
My memories of my time in recovery are fuzzy, it all blurs in together with weird dreams but one thing I vividly remember was asking “Am I alive? Did I make it through surgery?” and desperately wanting to know where my husband and mum were.
It was only about an hour or so that I stayed in recovery but it felt both longer and shorter to me all at the same time. It was a very bizarre feeling.
Being wheeled up to my room on the ward felt great because as I properly started to wake up the first people I saw were Rob and mum. Between the drugs and the sleepiness I made sure to let them know “I’m alive, I didn’t die” in case they weren’t quite aware of the fact and then drifted back off into a drug induced nap.
Eventually I did wake up again thanks to one of several awesome nurses I had assigned to me and it was time for my first sips of water and some pain relief. This had been one of my biggest feats post surgery that it would be so painful getting anything down into my swollen, cut up stomach. Turns out…not painful. Even managed to get down my pain relief (hellooo morphine tablets).
Then, even more surprising it was time to get up out of bed. I knew it was coming, and although it was sore it was manageable. Jenny my nurse helped me to the bathroom (during my hospital stay I became very accustomed to having some one with me when I peed…), helped give me a careful, small wash down with a damp face cloth to remove some of the dye my body was covered in and finally into a pair of comfy pajamas.
Since I was already up I decided to push on through and do my first walk around the ward…which in reality was probably more like a fifth of the length of the ward, but at least I had accomplished something already. It was news that was well received by my surgeon and anesthetist later that night when they came in to check on me at the end of the day.
It was quite the rollercoaster of emotions that day and that was only the beginning of my very long road to recovery and a change of life.
