Finally feeling well enough to do an actual post.

Yes, I survived the laparotomy. I've been wanting to update. Honestly, I have. But I've just felt so crummy for so many days. This is the first time I've felt totally like myself since the wee hours of Monday morning.

So...surgery itself went very well. Doc said my left tube was seriously screwed up. But he cut off all the adhesions and untwisted it and wrapped it in goretex and thinks it should look OK once it heals. Right tube was fine. All other extractions of bad adhesions and endometriosis went fine. We'll be back there on Sept 10th for laparoscopy to remove the goretex. In the meantime, we convalesce.

Spent two days in the hospital. I. HATED. THAT. I could not sleep in the hospital for more than 45 minutes at a time, and usually less than that. I was on morphine first, which made me sleepy and numb, but also itchy and wired. So I'd doze off mid-sentence and then startle awake moments later, only to find that my universe was altered in the moments of unconsciousness. Here's what I mean. I'd be totally alone in my room, but in the moments while I was sleeping I'd dream a conversation with my husband or nurse, and then I'd open my eyes and find that I was alone in my room. And talking to myself. Because I'd be answering the question that the imaginary person had just posed and wake up to find that I was answering no one. Also, I couldn't focus on anything, especially up close. I had a book and some other papers to read and I COULD NOT READ THEM. I finally figured out that if I took off my glasses, I could almost make out most of the words. And then I'd doze off.

It was not fun.

So then they decided I'd had enough morphine torture, and they switched me to percocet. This did almost the exact same thing to me, except in more measured doses because it was a pill every 4 hours instead of a drip whenever I had pain and pushed the button. Except that I AM MOST DEFINITELY ALLERGIC TO PERCOCET! I would be begging for pain relief by the time the nurse came for my dose, and ten minutes after my dose I'd be scratching myself from head to toe and looking for a rash or hives (which I wouldn't have been able to see even if I'd had the abdominal strength to lean up and look because of the dang screwed up vision!). After probably 4 doses of this, we finally figured out that it was the medication. (Hey, my thinking was narcotically altered. I am not to blame for taking so long to figure this out.)

Finally, they switched me to Darvocet. This was mildly better. At least I stopped hallucinating. And by then I could get myself out of bed and walk all the way down the hall without passing out or falling asleep spontaneously, so we were pretty close to check-out.

I checked out of the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, and since then it's been pretty crappy. I learned that I was very anemic after surgery when I filled the prescription for iron supplements and got a call from the doctor's office with instructions to come by for a CBC. Anemia and narcotics do not a hungry patient make. I was pretty nauseated for a couple of days. I abandoned the darvocet on my own and decided it was super-strength tylenol or nothing. And things have been gradually looking up ever since. After two very long days and not a lot of quality sleep, I think I finally have my blood sugar and hemoglobin levels in an acceptable range. I added a little walk around W*lM*rt today, and now I feel like myself again. Well, myself with a numb little pouch of swelling in my gut. Minus a whole lot of my normal energy. But still. Close to normal.

And I'm optimistic about a somewhat normal night of sleep. Tomorrow must be better, people. It MUST!