After surgery, I woke up in Recovery crying out in pain, tears running, and begging for more pain medicine to make it stop. So they gave me some. And I begged some more because holy moly it still hurt, and so they gave me some more. 'Lucid' is not a word you could use to describe me at that moment, but I think they gave me 4 doses of possibly 2 different meds. I'm not sure it helped.
I can remember that they let James come and see me for about 5 minutes, and seeing him and holding his hand gave me some strength, and then he had to leave and I was crushed and just kept thinking "I can't do this by myself, it's too hard and hurts too much, please don't make him leave, it hasn't been five minutes yet!" But I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything nearly so cohesive. I did cry some more, though, and probably managed something like "don't go yet!" but of course he had to go.
So then they took me to a post-op recovery room. The idea was that I needed to be able to walk on my own and go pee, and I'd get to go home.
Ha, haha.
If I laid super still, then the pain in my legs was about a 6-7. When I moved my legs, it rocketed up to 9-10, and felt like my muscles were being peeled off the bones. When it was time for me to get up and use the restroom, it was, shall we say, less than pleasant. But then, about the time I sat down to use the restroom, the nausea hit, and it hit hard. I didn't vomit, but I sure felt like I was going to - which would be a pretty bad thing, given the condition of my abdomen! I finished my business and thought I'd be going home, but it took everything I had to make it back to bed, and I just kept thinking, there is no way they can let me leave like this, I am NOT OKAY RIGHT NOW.
When I got back to bed, I asked the nurse for a cold pack.
Did you know that putting an ice pack on the back of your neck does wonders for nausea? I'm not kidding, it's amazing, and I've never thrown up when I've used this trick. And I had some serious morning sickness with both boys!
Anyway. Nurse was very nice, but she had other concerns, like giving me nausea. I kept demanding the ice pack (nicely, I am sure I said please), and she kept saying things that were not related to ice packs, so my brain wasn't processing them. When you feel that bad, you get focused on what you think will work for you and nothing else matters. If I could just have that ice pack, I'd survive, and she just didn't understand how vital it was for me to get the ice pack! Finally, after either 3 hours or 5 minutes, someone brought me the ice pack. Aahhh, sweet relief. Also about that time, the nausea meds hit bottom, and I was soooo sleepy. Nurse said that was best, to just go ahead and sleep it off. I'm not sure if it was all the pain medicine in Recovery, or the anesthesia, or the actual pain that caused the nausea, but sleeping helped. I have no idea how long I slept, but it was definitely dark when I woke up.
All through this nausea episode, I noticed but didn't notice the staff's concern with my blood pressure. It was concerning to me, too, but not as concerning as the nausea, because when you feel that bad, nothing else really matters. Except ice packs, of course. Normal blood pressure is 120/80. Mine tends to run a little low, around 110/70. This is normally a good sign, as it means your body isn't having to work too hard to get blood everywhere. But after surgery and with this many pain meds plus the anesthesia in my system, my blood pressure tanked. I'm pretty sure it was hovering around 80/50, and I definitely saw both of those numbers go even lower.
After my medication-induced nap, I woke up feeling much less nauseated, but my BP was still in the toilet. So, they made the decision to keep me overnight. That meant I had to change rooms, because the room I was in wasn't staffed overnight. So, we gathered up our things and they wheeled my bed to a different floor, and I had to get up out of that bed and crawl into the new bed. That was super fun, because remember, being statue-still was the least painful position!
All night, my BP stayed pretty low, and honestly, I think it was only like 88/58 when they released me the next day, but I guess they decided it was stable enough and figured I'd be fine on my own at home.
And I have been fine, but not on my own - Mom kept the boys for me, and stayed for a couple of weeks to help out when James was at work. The first week was the worst, but after that, I noticed an improvement every day. I am 8 weeks out now. I've been released to exercise and lift my boys, but I still have to take it easy sometimes because my body has taken a beating, and certain movements/activities like to remind me of that. So I'm just getting really good at listening to my body, and when a part says NOPE, I stop.
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