The Post-Op Journey Begins

When I woke up, the first thing I did was scream for pain meds. I kept asking if they had anything stronger because it felt like someone ripped open my gut. Wait, they did. By the time I was moved to my room, the meds had kicked in and I was in and out of consciousness. When my family was brought to my room, this is what they saw (sorry so blurry):

I had an NG tube coming out of my nose, and a CO2 indicator up each nostril. On top of that, they put on a CPAP mask, which they quickly decided was more trouble than it was worth.

Besides the pain (they asked me every few hours to rate my pain from 1 - 10. At this point in was probably way up there), the worst part was that I couldn't have water for another day. My mouth was so dry! They gave me a cup of ice water and a sponge on a stick to wipe around my mouth, but no drinking.

The next morning, the surgery team came around and took out my NG tube. It hurt and the nurse didn't warn me he was going to do it (he said I wouldn't have wanted him to). The good thing was that I could now drink some water.

I was given little pill cups (1 oz.) and was told I could drink one cup every 30 minutes. I thought, "yeah, right. that's like one sip" but it really did fill me up. I was burping all the time. I refused to "eat" any of the other liquid crap they were serving - juice, broth, jello - partially because my blood sugar was running high.

Oh, yeah...I forgot to mention that the endocrinologist did a crap job of controlling my blood sugar. I ran in the 300s for at least a day, and then 200s for the next. It only made me feel more like crap.

Wednesday the residents came in and told me that my blood work indicated that there was something wrong with my kidneys...