Surgery Day! 3/5/13

I kissed my two boys and told them today was the first day of a healthier momma and to be extra good for Daddy while I was recovering from surgery.  I kissed SM (Stud Muffin) and told him I loved him so much and I was so grateful to have his support to make such a drastic change.

Mom picked me up from the house at 5:30 am to be at the hospital at 6.  I was a nervous wreck and chatted at my mom anxiously the entire way.  As we walked through the doors it became very real that I was about to pay someone roughly $4000 to cute 85% of my stomach out of my body with robotic arms.  I started to panic a bit.  We went up to admitting and I paid the initial deposit to the hospital and put on the hospital bracelets.  We waited for the pre-op nurse to call us back.  From the time of the start of my pre-op diet to that morning I had lost 10 lbs.  I was 260 pounds the day of surgery.  I went into the pre-op room and got changed into the gown.  My mom is an operating room nurse so she brought me thigh high compression stockings to help avoid blood clots.  It took us both to wrestle all of me into those things.

Mom and I waiting to be called back for surgery

By then the boys and SM were on the road to school that morning.  In our home there is a wall of silver crosses.  On the back of them all is written the special blessing in our family (birth of children, new homes, firsts for the family, vacations, etc.).  I had purchased a special cross for my surgery.  I had already written my surgery day on the cross and had put the nail in the wall for it to hang.  SM called me to say one more time that he was proud of me and loved me.  He said that he had hung up my cross before leaving that morning and that he would see me the next day.  That's when I started to cry and I didn't stop until I was under for the surgery.  The pastor came into pray with Mom and I, the doctor came in to check on me before we headed to the OR, and the nurse put the IV in my hand (which I HATE).  Through all of this I cried.  The emotions of letting myself get so morbidly obese, using food as a drug, hiding behind my fat, etc. all became very real for me in that morning.

I was finally given my "top shelf margarita" and rolled back to the OR.  Mom said my surgery was very fast and was surprised at how quickly I was in the recovery room.  When I awoke from surgery I had a tube going up my nose and down into my stomach.  I had a fanny pack with a weird fluid filled pouch.  It was a morphine catheter that went straight into my 4 inch long incision on my stomach.  There was also a drainage tube coming out of the left side of my belly with a drainage bulb attached to the end.  I had a catheter in for the first part of the day.  By evening time, my catheter was removed, I got up and took my first short walk from my bed to the nurses desk and straight back to bed.  I continued to push my morphine pump button to try and stay as out of it as possible.  The tube running up my nose and down my throat made me gag every second I was awake.  Dry heaving on a freshly stapled stomach was supremely painful.  By that time the vein in my right hand had blown and a nurse had to come in and start a new IV in my left hand.  The evening passed by pretty much in a daze.

Stay tuned for the next installment and all the drama that ensued the day after surgery.