My Gastric Bypass: The Hospital Stay

First, can I just say again how the time seems to be flying by?  Really? A MONTH?!  An entire month since my surgery?? Shocking!!  I KNOW, I really need to get with it and catch up with these updates.

Now, where did I leave off?  I believe I had just gotten out of surgery and was about to head into my first night in the hospital.

THE FIRST NIGHT

When Martine (my hospital roommate) arrived back after her surgery, she was feeling pretty miserable.  After her husband and son got to see her she asked them to leave as she wasn’t feeling up to having them around, and didn’t want her son to see her so miserable.  Xander took that as his cue to leave as well, so it was just us two freshly operated girls left alone in our room.

We spent a little while telling each other what we were feeling, comparing to see if we were feeling the same things.  It was all pretty standard, we were sore and having a lot of pain from the gas working its way out of our system.  We knew we were in for a long night!

As it turned out, we both had very different ways of dealing with the pain.  Martine was very shifty and had a hard time getting comfortable, which wasn’t helped by the fact that her bed appeared to be broken and was on a slant.  She also seemed to be a lot more affected by the IV than I was, and made a lot of trips back and forth to the toilet through the night.

Me?  Well, I had other plans… I quickly realized that the more I moved the more it hurt, and came to the conclusion that the only solution was to just not move.  At all.  EVER.  I got my bed in a good position with my back raised slightly and my knees bent and I stayed like that, arms at my side, perfectly still.  My back got stiff, but that hurt far less than the rest of me hurt when I tried to shift to get more comfortable. There WAS no more comfortable, that was it and I was set to stay like that through the night.

At one point the nurse came in to help Martine go to the toilet and she came by my bed and asked how I was doing.  I told her I was doing fine and there were no problems.  Then we had a conversation that went a little bit like this…

Her:  Have you been to the toilet yet?
Me: No…
Her:  Did you want to try?
Me: No thank you, I’m fine.
Her:  Are you sure?
Me (still not moving): Yup, very sure.
Her:  You should probably try…
Me: No really, I’m fine.
Her: Let’s get you up and have you try to go to the toilet.
Me: Ok…

I didn’t even need to pee, but I was too weak to fight back and of course the minute I got on my feet the gas pain made it feel like someone was stabbing me in the shoulder.  This was no fun, no fun at all… and I was going through all of this for nothing because I didn’t even need to go.

She helped me sit down on the toilet and then went back outside to give me some privacy.

Then she stood there, for about five minutes… while I pissed like a racehorse.

Ok, I guess she knew what she was doing.  Apparently I was about two minutes from wetting the bed and I didn’t even know it.

The rest of the night Martine and I were pretty much wide awake.  We got our little bottle of painkillers attached to our IV every six hours, but they would wear off after four hours, so we’d spend the last two hours feeling pretty rotten.  Martine continued to shift, curse her bed and make trips to the toilet and I, once again, laid perfectly still.

A few times she would shout “What is wrong with you, why aren’t you moving?!” and “You are like a dead person!!” and she was right, even I was shocked by how many hours would go by without me moving a single muscle.  Still, it worked for me.

The great thing about rooming with Martine was that she was totally on the ball and had absolutely no qualms about ringing for the nurse.  If our pain meds were due at 4am, boy she was on that buzzer by 4:02am!  I was not one to ring the nurses but I was often able to piggyback off her calls.  When they’d check on her they’d check on me too, which made it even easier for me to just lay there and do nothing!

I spent a lot of the time I was laying there trying to stay positive.  I kept repeating in my mind that the pain was only temporary, I could do it.  I envisioned knee high boots, crossing my legs, being happy and healthy… and most of all, a baby in my arms.  All the reasons I was having the surgery to begin with.

I don’t want to sound all hippy dippy but the lack of movement plus an entire night of forced positive thinking really did help me get through that first night.  Don’t get me wrong, it was still somewhat hellish but it wasn’t nearly the kind of hell it could have been if I hadn’t spent it the way I did.

MORNING FINALLY ARRIVES

Even though we were up the entire night, it doesn’t feel like it was that long.  Maybe it was because I was roomed with someone I knew beforehand and since we were both awake we talked a fair bit.  In any case it was long and painful but the minutes didn’t go by like hours or anything, at least not for me.   When morning came and the nurses started buzzing around more I tried to remember something a post-op friend had told me before I went in for the surgery.  “GET UP AND GET MOVING!”  Well, judging by the night before you can imagine how I felt about that idea but hey, she’d been there so she must know what she was talking about.  I got up and put my robe and started walking the hall.  It was quite busy as we were in the maternity ward, people were all a buzz with their balloons and stuffed animals.  I could say I wasn’t a bit jealous but who would I be kidding, I wished more than anything that I was there for the same reason as they all were, but hopefully my time would come.

I walked the full length of our hall, then up another hall and by the time I got back to my bed I was pretty much worn out.  I just got back on the bed and the stabbing pains in my shoulders were starting to subside when the nurse walked in and asked me if I’d like to have a shower and get dressed.  Truth be told at that very moment I just wanted to assume the mummy position again but I decided that if they thought I was ready, I was ready!

The young nurse in training helped me get my clothes off and I stepped into our big private shower.  I was still attached to the IV so the pole had to stay outside the shower, which limited my movement.  She left the bathroom so I could shower in peace, telling me she’d be outside if I needed her.

OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  EEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!

That was pretty much my immediate response once she was out the door, because as it turns out the shower runs on sensors. One for the normal shower head and one for the million little massage jets all over the shower.   I guess when I turned around to try to pull my IV pole closer to the shower doors, my arse must have swiped across the sensor for the jets and suddenly I was being pummeled by ice cold water from every direction. Not only that but the top jets were somehow turned upward and were shooting straight up and over the top of the shower into the rest of the bathroom.

I had no idea what was happening, my stomach was killing me because the immediate reaction to such cold water is to clench every muscle in your body as tight as humanly possible.  Oh this was no fun, no fun at all!!!  I screamed for help.

Once the whole sensor thing was explained to me and I fixed the temperature of the water, it was much better. I was able to relax, scrub off a lot of that weird yellow stuff they’d swabbed all over me and feel a bit more like a normal person.  When I got out of the shower I got dried off and the nurse helped me put a normal shirt on over the IV.  Normal clothes, this was a definite improvement from the ass hanging out gown I’d been previously wearing.

By the time I was showered and dressed and came back out into the room Xander had arrived and was standing with a bit of a shocked look on his face.  I think that like me, he had been expecting me to still be doing my dead man float impression on the bed (he knows me so well!)  but no, HA!  I was little miss up and at ‘em!

THE FAST TRACK

It was around this time when things felt like they started moving at lightning speed.  The nurses came in and told me that I could probably go home the next afternoon (this was a bit of a shock as I was expecting four days in the hospital and I had only been operated on the day before)… they told me if I wanted to stay that I could but they thought I’d be ready to go.  I was a little afraid of the thought of going home and having to do everything on my own and learn how to live with my new little stomach, but the idea of going home appealed to me far more than that, so I told them I wanted to go.

Later in the morning I was given a big bottle of water and was told to start sipping it, as well as a little tub of fat free / sugar free yogurt.  I didn’t eat a lot of the yogurt, because I had no idea how much I COULD eat just yet, but I tried and it went ok.

That’s me and my little tub of yogurt.  Yes, I know I look REALLY horrible and weird but give me a break, I’d just been operated on, was totally drugged up, and spent the entire night painfully awake JUST to get up and be attacked by a shower.  How would YOU look?

A few hours later after they saw that the water was going ok, they took out my IV and that really gave me a lot more freedom to get up and move around without worrying about that pole.

The only annoying thing left was the drain on my left side.  There was a baggie attached to the left side of my upper stomach, with a tube going along inside me to allow any fluids from the area of the operation to drain out.  The night before the bag had gotten quite full and that hung heavy which was very uncomfortable.  I got lucky and later that afternoon the drain was removed as well.  I was now totally free of all ‘attachments’ and while it was painful to get up and out of bed, no longer having the drain or the IV pole felt great.  I was able to walk the halls a little bit more with Xander, which we were told we had to do at least twice a day.

All in all I’d say this was probably the most painful day of all, the day after my surgery.  The gas pain was at its strongest and that, more than any pain I had gotten from the incisions or surgery itself, continued to be the worst pain of the entire process.   Thankfully, in the next 3-4 days it would go away completely.

THE SECOND NIGHT

Xander and Martine’s husband and son left shortly after dinner, leaving Martine and I on our own for the rest of the night.  We were both quite tired and were ok until our two hour mark would come before we could get our painkillers.  Martine was still on an IV so she got hers from the nurses, but my IV was gone so I was able to take my painkillers on my own, which were two pills that melted in my mouth.  I watched the clock like a hawk and every six hours on the dot I’d pop those pills like my life depended on it.

I spent the evening going back and forth between watching TV shows on my laptop and chatting with Martine.  By 9pm or 10pm we both got into bed for the night and like the night before, she had her routine of trying to get comfortable and going for a pee, while I nestled in and played dead.

At one point during the night I became extremely nauseated.  I wasn’t sure what was going on but I was absolutely miserable.  This would be the one and only time I would ever ring the nurses, which would make Martine exclaim “WOW It must be bad if YOU are pressing the button!”, and it was.  Unfortunately the nurse said there wasn’t a lot they could do but if it got worse to ring them.  I didn’t bother and just made a point of laying even more still.  Yeah, that’s my go to thing for nausea too.

Overall the night was fairly uneventful, it hurt, I felt a little sick, it sucked but I got through it.

BYEBYE NOW!

Imagine my shock when the nurse comes in the next morning and tells me I am good to go between 9am-10pm.  I was operated on Wednesday afternoon and thought I would be there until Saturday afternoon. Then I thought I was leaving Friday afternoon, a day early.  Now they tell me that I’m good to go early Friday morning, 1.5 days earlier than I was meant to.  I had to phone Xander who was taking his sweet time coming to the hospital as he figured I was there till later in the afternoon at the least.  Our original plan was that we’d spend the night at his hotel and then head home on Saturday morning.  He was shocked when I phoned to tell him to come to the hospital right away and we were both thankful when the hotel didn’t charge us for the night that we weren’t going to stay.

While I was waiting for him the nurse brought me tea with a little pudding cup and yogurt.  Again, I barely ate a quarter of each, still incredibly afraid of my lack of feeling in my stomach. I had no idea how much I could eat, how full I was getting as I ate… my body felt totally foreign to me and it was such a scary feeling.

My doctor came to visit before I left and said he was pleased with my progress.  His assistant was there earlier and gave me the medications (a pill I have to take each morning to protect my stomach and a needle I had to give myself each day against thrombosis… they tried to tell me to go to the doctor and have them do the needle but I’m an old pro when it comes to needles!).

I also got a pretty cool letter to carry around so if I ever decide to eat at a restaurant here in the Netherlands and try to order a child’s menu, if I show them this letter they are legally not allowed to refuse me.  Granted, I won’t be going out to eat anytime soon, nor would I probably order a child’s plate as it’s usually just chicken nuggets or something anyway, but it’s cool to have all the same.

The morning went by really quickly.  I was busy getting my stuff together, getting my bandages changed and trying to take in all the info from the doctors and nurses.  I was also having some last minute chatting with Martine, who was finally able to drink after a very long two days.   She was staying until Saturday afternoon and would spend the rest of her time in the hospital having that big beautiful room all to herself!

Before I knew it, it was time to go…

One last hospital photo for the road!

Xander wheeled me out of the hospital and carefully got me in the car and prepared for the 2.5 hour drive back to Rotterdam.  One of the best tips I could have gotten was to bring my own pillow to the hospital.  It not only made me a lot more comfortable in bed than the hospital pillows but it was great for in the car.  I put the pillow across my belly and then put the seatbelt around it, so that it wasn’t pressing on me directly.  I found that hugging the pillow made me a lot more comfortable while we were making the trip home, especially on those ridiculously damaged Belgian roads.

So that was it, in a flash my operation and my time in the hospital had come to an end.  Now it was up to me to move on to my new life and try to make the best of this chance I’d been given, which I found both exciting and utterly frightening at the same time.