Day 8 was a lot better in terms of pain and sleeping. I'm only taking Ibuprofen now for a little bit of pain, the only thing that sucks is that I have to wear all these bands (I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I have 3 rubber bands across 10 of my teeth that holds my mouth together in the right position. Kind of like being wired shut, except not really), and they hold my mouth shut, but my nose is really stopped up (I'm not allowed to blow it so I don't burst a blood vessel), so breathing has turned into kind of a chore. There's a picture of me, working away at my little work station. (that's a tissue in my nose to keep it from running constantly, Jared thought that was just hilarious and had to take a picture)Also, the pictures make the bruising look way worse than it does in person, just so the cyberland viewers are aware. You can see it if you look for it, but it's not as dominant as in these pictures. The bruising on my neck is a mystery, we haven't been able to figure out why that might be there.
Warning: This rest of this entry has some pretty... personal stuff in it, although I've tried to make it the least amount of gross as possible.
Yesterday, I was really feeling good. It had been over a week, and I was eating pretty well. We had an AM appointment with Dr. Voorhees and he said everything looked perfect, and then gave me the authority to change my bands.
So, anyway, because I took so much time off of work from the surgery, and because it's not like my work is super stressful, as soon as I got home from my appointment I started in on some work. And actually worked until almost 5:30 just fine, everything was great.
Now, I'm going to give a warning to people to whom I'm not especially close with who may be reading this blog: this next part is probably more personal than we'd ever talk about in person, so if you don't want to hear about pretty intimate stuff, just stop now and enjoy the rest of your Thursday.
Okay, well, one of the side effects of a major surgery and anesthesia is a lag in... the last part of your digestive system. It's pretty normal and expected. Well, we thought I was okay because I had used the restroom on Friday, but then not again after that. But, chalk it up to not eating as much as I normally do, and the fact that I was peeing a lot, and we weren't worried.
Well, yesterday, my intestines started hurting a lot. Like, really bad. Okay, went to the bathroom, great, everything's fine. Well, 20 minutes later, they started cramping really badly again. I went into the bathroom and it just escalated so quickly. I called for Jared and to bring me something to throw up in because I thought I was going to be sick it hurt so bad, and then, I started experiencing what, to me (a classic hypochondriac), a seizure. I fell backwards, my eyes were all fluttery, I was really cold but sweaty, I couldn't move, and according to Jared at one point I lost consciousness and got really pale and stopped breathing. He says to him it felt like almost a minute, but it was probably less.
So, I wake up, and I have no idea what to do or think. Bear in mind that I am on all sorts of different medications, pain and otherwise, for this surgery, I have my anxiety, and I had also been taking Darvocet, which was recently banned by the FDA. So, all this is flashing through my mind when Jared asked if he should call 911. I said yes. [Lucky that this happened yesterday and not today because 8/31 just happened to be the last day of the fiscal year for my health plan, which was already maxed out, we realized later]
Well, the paramedics came and they were really nice, and they ran a bunch of tests. My CO2 level, which is normally supposed to be between 35 and 40 was at 21, which he said was probably just due to my anxiety and hyperventilating over the situation. In the meantime, Jared wanders back into the bathroom, and apparently I had gone again (I don't remember), and it's a lot. I ended up going to the bathroom one more time that night, so we're pretty sure about what happened - vasovagal syncope.
Basically, it had been so long since I had gone to the bathroom, and I was eating so well, that everything was just hanging out in there, until it couldn't any more. We talked to the on-call doctor on my case, Dr. Kern - he visited me twice in the hospital, too - and he concurred with the assessment that the EMS guys had made, that this was what had happened. Apparently, the pain medication that I had taken - because I won't take codine, hydrocodone, or valium - is an opiate derivative, which is notorious for that same side effect as anesthesia, which I mentioned earlier. The craziest part is that Dr. Kern said that sometimes older people can actually die when this happens, because it stops your heart.
But, all's well that ends well, so everybody's good now, and I'm taking it easy today, and drinking a lot of water.
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