Wednesday, September 23, 2009

.surgery day.

september 14th 2009, my mom's birthday and date for foot surgery #2, left foot.
happy birthday mom! i'm getting a new foot for you for your birthday!
my surgery was supposed to be at 10:25 am, arrive to hospital 2 hrs early at 8:25 am to fill out paper-work, get prepped, yada yada. got a call says to arrive at 7 am instead (i'm thinking, great! i got bumped to an earlier time slot, good thing since no eating after midnight the night before makes for a very hungry sarah). arrive at 7 am. paper work ("i promise not to sue the hospital if i wake up and have no foot"). waiting room, sit and wait to wait some more, do crossword with dad and neighboring weird guy who seems to like crosswords as well. finally called in, i'm sure it was well after 10:25 am, in fact, no one knows why i got a call to come in at 7 am, could have slept another hour. disrobe, put on pretty little cotton hospital gown (see above) which is better than the synthetic one last time. answer a bunch of questions, lay in bed and wait some more. finally get that pesky little IV in the arm, wait some more. anyhow, ended up waiting hours and hours because they had at least two emergencies, one of which was someone getting their foot amputated (no problem, i'll wait, i'm just happy i'm gonna "walk" out of here). get the ipod playlist set, and away we go! post surgery, eat as many graham crackers and drink as many tiny cups of apple juice as possible, i was sooo hungry. wait for the lower half to come-to and somehow i'm in the van on my way home texting people (which i do not remember, equivalent to drunk dialing). home. eat some soup, take some drugs, pass out. that was my experience. lovely.

*

.1st post-surgery doc visit.

post-surgical nasty gauze peeled off so i can get cleaned up.
(note doc's initials and arrow indicating "slice this foot").


after getting all the gauze off, get cleaned up, new wraps on, these are the fun highlights, you can see my stitches, my bright yellow betadine leg. everything looks as it should, amazingly. my big toe got pretty banged up this time around, all bruised i mean. the toes are straight, waaaay less swelling than last time and once again, those cute little pins. they say i'm good to go for two weeks (i've peeked once so far).
so, all in all, i'm pretty optimistic that things are going well. aside from the allergic hivey outbreak to darvocet which i am still trying to get out of my system, things are going pretty good. haven't had to take as many pain pills this time around, perhaps my brain remembers the pain so it isn't as bad, or maybe last time that pesky fourth toe just made everything worse.
next visit i'm due for stitches out (which last time was worse than the pins coming out if you can believe it), and the pins don't come out for 8 weeks post surgery, i'll start feeling loads better after that. good thing i've got all my "sarah on crutches" systems down already makes that part easier too.
i can't wait to take a nice long walk... patience...



2 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your new foot! Thanks for this post. I have had surgery and it would really have been wonderful to have known all of this going into it! I'm in a good mood right now because I discovered the ChiliPad. It's a mattress pad that lets you cool down (or heat up) your bed, any temperature between 46 and 118 degrees. Other than soothing inflammation, the best thing about is is it brings the pain threshold below what will wake me up - so I'm able to get more sleep at night, which in turn reduces my pain.

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  2. susan- yeah, i hope someone else who has to go thru this can find me and i can be of some help, as were the few people i found in my pre-surgery search. wishing you many pain-free days!

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