Wow, what a blog hiatus! I have an excuse, of course. I've been healing. And then having more surgery. Which went kind of haywire and required hospital stay. Yeah.
So surgery #2 on Friday, the "easy" scope to remove the protective film from my organs? Hmmm. Well, it took longer than expected because something got knicked and started bleeding and then they took forever getting it to stop. The rest went well. But then in recovery I got all swollen and couldn't, uh, void (a prerequisite to discharge from hospital). And then the CO2 gas they pump into you during surgery (to keep the organs floating or something) didn't get all sucked back out...probably because surgery was longer than expected and it escaped and hid all over my chest cavity. And then the gas attacked my right shoulder. I hear this is common. Not so common, however, is that it then attacked my whole chest cavity and gave my lungs just a very tiny bit of room to move. I was panting. And panicking. It was not fun. The powers-that-be decided really quickly that I would not be leaving the hospital that day, and they started to run all kinds of tests to find out how to help me.
When the tests came back, they found out that my kidneys were going haywire. Whoa. Good thing my lungs started freaking out so we could find this out. Because this kidney thing was pretty important (not related to the breathing thing, but important for overall wellness, you know). The trigger? Several causes were debated, but almost certainly the problem was exacerbated by the nurse who gave me a mega-dose of Ibuprofen in post-op for pain control. I asked for Tylenol. Non-narcotic. She said they only had regular strength. I said my doctor told me not to use Ibuprofen. She talked me into it. (I was just out of surgery, post-anesthesia, and a little bit in pain, people.) Yeah. Turns out there's a reason that ibuprofen is not recommended for patients with kidney disease (me).
So I ended up staying ANOTHER night waiting for my kidneys to adjust and begin behaving normally. They did. Meanwhile I had a whole new team of doctors checking on me (nephrology). I barely slept the whole time (have you TRIED to get a good night of sleep in a hospital? While a bunch of people keep poking you for one reason or another?). Someone is going to end up paying for another two nights of hospital stay and a billion blood tests and another team of doctors because of all of this mess.
And this was supposed to be outpatient.
*Sigh*
We saw my doctor on Monday (I was finally discharged on Sunday), who showed us the video of my second surgery, which ended in pictures of textbook-like anatomy, which I have NEVER EVER SEEN...with my name on it, anyway. So, overall, the surgeries did exactly what they were intended to do. Success. Just with some HUGE stumbling blocks along the way.
We drove forever and finally met Olivia and her grandparents on Tuesday at a restaurant, where we were going to have lunch and then make the transfer of kid and kid's stuff so we could go HOME. As they pulled up to the restaurant, we walked outside to greet them. Olivia had the car door open almost before they stopped the car. She screamed and ran to me with arms outstretched. I broke down into a sobbing pile of goo.
Did I mention the sleep deprivation? Combine that with missing your child for more than two weeks and I'm not sure I had any chance to react any other way.
Olivia was happy to give us lots of hugs and kisses all day. I noticed in certain instances that she seemed to be dealing with her own set of confusing emotions about Mommy and Daddy being gone so long. I hope we can work through those in the next few weeks, when we aren't going to be doing much but staying home and playing together (doctor's orders...take it VERY easy for a few weeks).
I'm just happy we're all home, and all together again.
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