Back Home Safe and Sound

I had my surgery bright and early Monday morning.  Poor Rick sat in my room waiting for 6 hours...over 4 hours in surgery and almost 2 in recovery.  Talk about a long time to keep yourself occupied, let alone worry about everything being okay.  My nurses later said he was really cute about the whole thing.

The first part was the hysterectomy and the second was the right hemicolectomy.  I was glad to hear that they were able to do both surgeries laparoscopically like they had hoped, for a much quicker recovery.  The surgeon doing the colon procedure was even able to use the same incision sites as the OBGYN when she originally thought she would have to create ones of her own...translates to 4 incisions rather than the 7 or 8 they anticipated.  The hysterectomy went perfectly and the colon portion went better than the surgeon said she has ever had it go before!  It helps that I am only 34 and her typical patients are in their 60-80's, but I'll take it!  She is also L.D.S. and when her scrub nurse commented about how well she said, "She must live her life right."  Love that typical L.D.S. answer! 

 The first couple of days of recovery were the worst thing I could imagine, luckily I had an epidural in so most of my body was "numb" because it sure hurt like @$#%&*.  By the end of day 3 I was slowly able to start doing things for myself, where days before my nurses did everything for me and I was slowly able to start eating/drinking a few things too- I went from not eating or drinking anything since Saturday night to finally being able to drinking water on Wednesday and eating only Jell-O and popcyles on Thursday.  I still can only eat a few bites of things at a time and nothing sounds good...not even diet Coke.

 The first two days I was in way too bad of shape to have Rick bring the kids up to visit, I didn't want to scare them, but by Wednesday night I was excited for them to come up after baseball/softball.  Both of them were pretty apprehensive about what to expect, but quickly saw there was nothing to be afraid of and enjoyed coming and visiting.  After 5 long days of staring at the same wall of my hospital room my doctors cleared me to go home.  I have had to adjust to not having a hospital bed to help me up/down nor the handles in the bathroom and shower, which has taken some adjusting, but it is nice to be home.

Now we play the waiting game for the pathology report.  I have an appointment with my oncologist April 30th to go over things, but the tumor was the size of a dime and the surgeon said the blood supply looked good, but she wasn't about to say anything in regards to the lymph nodes.  We will keep everybody up to date when we find more out.  Thanks for your words of encouragement and prayers in my behalf.