surgery report

Knowing that I was going to spend most of the following day puking, I had a giant burrito the night before surgery.  Yum.

We showed up at the hospital around 7am.  I got checked in and then waited for the nurse to take me back.  

We went through all the fun pre-op stuff, including letting Dr. P write on my leg (swoon!) and stabbing me with needles.  Ugh.  The poet tried to covertly take a bunch of pictures of Dr. P to tape on my mirror show you guys.

I'm ready!  I'm a little scared.

 He's actually doing a crossword puzzle.

 He wears Crocs.  FLAWED.

This one he actually posed for.  

Once he was done, they wrapped me up like a little surgery burrito and whooshed me away.

This is actually the same size as the burrito I ate the night before.

Once they got me into the OR, I was HORRIFIED to discover that Katy Perry was playing over the speakers.  The studly Dr. P listens to teeny bopper music?  I asked the nurse if it was his music and they laughed hysterically.  Whew.  Turns out he likes country.  I guess that's okay.  

I didn't get really scared until they moved me over to the table and I caught a glimpse of the scalpels.  EEKS.  But soon enough I drifted off to dreamland, where I had a very nice dream about cycling somewhere gorgeous until I woke up in recovery.  I heard Dr. P talking to the poet and groggily asked him for a high-five.  I spent quite a bit of time in recovery, first because I was pretty woozy and couldn't sit up, and then because I got really nauseous and was dry-heaving for a few hours.  They gave me magical no-puking drug #1, which didn't do anything, but magical no-puking drug #2 seemed to take the edge off.  Around 1:00 they dumped me in the back seat of the poet's car and we headed home.  I dry-heaved some more in the car but managed to keep my burrito down (DAMMIT).  I slept a solid 5-6 hours when I got home, but when I woke up I felt decent enough to eat a real dinner and read a little before conking out again.

Since then, I've been doing pretty well.  I have dim memories of what recovery was like after the first surgery, and as far as I can recall, it was MUCH worse than this.  Friday night I was able to sit on the couch for a few hours and hang out with some awesome girls, although when I got up off the couch to go to bed, pain shot through my leg.  I spent most of Saturday in bed with the bottle of Percocet & a stopwatch, but again was feeling good enough to come out and eat dinner on the couch.  Sunday morning I showered and had another great visitor, but after that I was so worn out that I fell asleep for 5+ hours.  I haven't used the crutches since Thursday, and while I'm moving pretty slowly, I'm moving!  I've been craving veggies and fruit like crazy, so I'm hoping that my body is using it for some pretty deep healing right now.

I see Dr. P tomorrow for my first post-op appointment, and he'll take the bandages off and let me know what I'm cleared to do.  I'm hoping that gentle swimming and slow stationary biking gets the okay, as I feel slodgy and slow from laying in bed for 4 days.  

A huge thanks to everyone for all your texts, tweets, emails, etc this weekend - you guys are such a great support system and I can't wait to get back out there!

And a big special awesome high-five to everyone that ran Philly yesterday - I love reading all the race reports and am so glad to hear that everyone had such a great time!