for a minute. while it is still fresh. I'm gonna want to remember some of this later....
Sunday, Dec. 21 - returned home from Middletown, OH from my grandpa's funeral. I had McDonald's. I hadn't had it in a while but I was feeling like I needed to. The fries were not the glorious little bits that I remember. They were greasy and lackluster. I'm really glad I did it.
Monday, Dec 22 - I began the 8 day liquid diet. We also put the hole in the wall in the kitchen this day. Every pound of the hammer, every saw, even the tiniest noise made my hunger headache ten times worse. This was by far the worst day out of the diet days. It really hit me that I wasn't going to be able to eat whenever I wanted to. I truly mourned my food.
Thursday, December 25 - I finally started to feel normal again. Just about half way through the liquid diet and I was finding some sense of balance. At least there were no more headaches.
Tuesday, December 30 - I arrived at the hospital at 5:30a.m. We waited in the VERY cold waiting room for about 30 minutes. They finally took me back and prepped me. Funny thing is, when they weighed me, I weighed 2 lbs higher than I did before the liquid diet. They put me in the awesome blow-up, heated suit and asked my name and the reason I was here about a million times.
I went into surgery pretty much on time at 7:30a.m. From what I understand, no real complications. The intubation went fine (I had had some problems when I went in for gall bladder surgery). This guy had none. I obviously don't remember anything in there. I woke up in recovery and they moved me around noon up to my real room. I was on the ninth floor. I began walking around 3p.m. At first it was to the end of the hall. At 5 p.m., I was walking around the loop of the floor. My bladder was working. I walked about every 2 hours. The morphine pump was working just fine as well.
The next day, I was doing fine and the decided to dismiss me around 4 p.m. We go home, I had some blended soup. Then it happened. I had a nosebleed. These are fairly common for me. The only bad thing is that it drained back into my little pouch. Around 6:30 p.m., I began throwing up. and throwing up and throwing up. It looked like beef broth and smelled like fishy death. I still can't get that smell out of my head. The first time I vomited, It had blood in it which freaked both of us out. This continued on through the night and then about 5:30 a.m., Kenny paged Dr. Brandon. He called us back about 15 mins later and told us to go on down to the emergency room. He would meet us there. We got there about 6:30 and he was in my emergency room around 7a.m.
They began doing testing on me. The first of which was an x-ray. I was in so much pain that I just cried. They asked me to lie down flat and I couldn't. When I finally got into that position, they asked me to stay still. Not a problem since I couldn't even take a breath. They got me back to my room shortly after and began pumping me with drugs. We wanted to go up to a floor but that never happened. I stayed down there in the emergency room for a total of 37 hours. Truth be told, the first 12 hours were horrible, but then when the 7p to 7a nurse came in, he had pity on me. His name was David and he went down and tracked down a real bed for me. after that, I was fine. Those little gurneys are not made for extended stay and especially not for a 300 pound woman.
I stayed there until Friday afternoon. The doctor said that my xray showed that I had an ileus. Basically my bowels were a little angry and were not coming to the party yet. I went home and stayed on clear liquids. I am in no hurry.
Saturday Jan 3 - I was feeling better. still groggy but better. I actually farted. I have never been so happy about passing gas. Also, I had my last dose of Lortab.
Sunday Jan 4 - I had my first bowel movement. This was absolutely monumental for me. I am still struggling to get in all of my proteins and such but it is getting better exponentially each day.
Monday, Jan 5 - My first day home alone. I didn't do much. I took most of everything that I needed to take. I need to be a little more diligent about this. I got in about 50-60 grams of proteins though. Thats a big step for me.
Now we begin in real time.....