Another kick at surgery

The last few days have been crazy busy.

I'm sure that I mentioned in the past the mess I made of my ankle about  18 months ago.  I fell down some stairs and managed to sprain it badly - or at least I thought that was all I did.  Turns out that I also chipped a piece of bone off the joint and tore off part of the ligament.  Anyway, it still hasn't been fixed properly and still hurts often.  I finally had an appointment with a new orthopedic surgeon who doesn't want to do anything until he gets more information.  I have had xrays and ultrasounds done on the ankle, but that's not enough apparently.  Anyway, I saw this new guy about a month ago and just had an MRI done on my ankle last Tuesday.  The MRI itself wasn't that bad, but the position that they had me in sucked.  My ankle hurt the whole time because of positioning, my knee was hyperextended so hurt, and my leg was pulled out and my hip misaligned which threw my back out. It just doesn't take much to mess me up.

Then on Thursday I had what I hope is the last of the D&Cs for a while.  As I've mentioned before, I just can't handle the pain of the endometrial biopsies anymore.  Even with serious amounts of drugs in my system, it feels like someone is stabbing me through the uterus with knives... over and over.  So in November, my oncologist decided that she couldn't put me through that again and decided that she would do D&Cs instead.  I had one in January that came back clear and she said in about three months which apparently means 5.  I had another one on Thursday.  Now, I appreciate that she gets the pain thing, but I don't understand the need for constantly pushing the time frames back.  Originally my treatment was supposed to be 6 months, then changed to 9 months, and now it will be 15 months by the time I'm off the drugs.  Here's the thing - I was clear at my four month biopsy, and the 7 month one, and the 10 month one... so continuing the drugs seems stupid, but whatever.

Anyway, we live over an hour away from the surgery centre and I had to be there by 6:30 so really early morning for us.  It was slightly amusing however that they got me admitted and into a gown and bed and then forgot about me until about 20 minute prior to my surgery time and had to rush through all the pre-op paperwork and almost forgot to give me my pre-op drugs.

The surgery went really well.  She did a D&C and a hysteroscopy to take a look in there and since the oncologist was in surgery all day she left me a note saying everything looked great and she anticipated no problems.  I'm supposed to make an appointment to see her in six weeks for results and follow up.  This seemed odd to me since I have always done follow-ups about 3 weeks after biopsies and D&Cs.  Anyway, I guess in a way it's good because I won't have to miss work for the appointment.

So the surgery went well - only took about 25 minutes - and when I woke up they filled me full of morphine. I was all sorts of dopey and out of it, but just couldn't sleep because of all the noise in the ward. I have a problem with sleep also where my oxygen levels drop because I breathe so shallow, so they wouldn't let me go since my oxygen kept dropping to about 90, which is apparently the scary number.  So every time I drifted off, they woke me up and made me take deep breaths. My husband was so confused by the length of time I had been in there that he actually called up to the ward to check on me.  I went into surgery at 8:30 and they let me out of the hospital at 1:30 - so it was a long day since we were up at 4:30.

Just a side note - I don't know how people can become addicted to morphine.  I get the pain killing aspect - that was pretty nice, but being so dopey and out of it - no thanks!

We got home and I went to bed and slept for a few hour and woke up feeling pretty good.  I had taken Friday off too, and felt pretty good on Friday - no cramping at all which was good.  By Saturday though, everything changed.  TMI time.  Apparently anesthetic completely constipates me.  I was putting food in from Thursday onward, but as of Saturday afternoon, nothing was coming out still. I took laxatives which made the pain worse.  I ended up awake most of last night with cramps - both gas/bowel pains and uterus cramping.  I basically laid on the couch all day and most of the night with a heating pad - I finally felt comfortable enough to go to bed at about 4 am.  Thankfully I could take a nap today - a nice long one with the puppy on the bed beside me (he was tired too because he was awake all night as I laid on the couch moaning.  I feel a bit better today.  The bowel issues have mostly fixed themselves, and I'm only cramping a bit.  I am exhausted and wish I could take tomorrow off of work too, but I can't.  This is where my job sucks - I have to plan for a sub each time I'm sick - blah.

So tomorrow is back to work even though I feel a bit like crap still, but hopefully I won't have to endure this for a good long time again.

The bonus is that while I laid on the couch today, Netflix gave me a new season of Arrested Development.  I love that show and particularly Jason Bateman.  Good way to spend the day... three more episodes and I've finished the whole season.  Oh and my husband brought me home a pot of chrysanthamums today.  He said that I have done so much that I deserved something... I said that I haven't done anything - he said "you let a bunch of people do things and put things in uncomfortable places and put you through pain to have a baby... you do lots".  awww.  I won't tell him that I was more excited about the cookies he brought home than the flowers but it was definitely a nice gesture.