Day 3 after surgery

[warrior68 16]

Ok so today is the begining if day 3 after surgery, I was checked for leaks yesterday, and all is good there. The pain is not to bad, or at least to me its not, I mean yes I am sore, but its not killing me. Everything has gone very well so far, thanks to DR "D" and the staff here at the hospital.

[dudeman 0]

I had a morphine drip (which was optional and extra believe it or not) to which I had a button to push for pain post-op. I must say that I was kinda abusing that, as the anesthesia nurses came to check the remaining volume and noticed I had been too button happy .. anyhoot, when they decided to remove my IV when I was clear to drink Water and diluted sports drink, I asked that they keep the morphine in but they refused and took it away. So, my op was at noon on Feb 8th, and I awoke around 4 or 5PM, I had the morphine until the next day around 6PM. After they un-hooked me from the drip stand, I was "weened" from pain medication. the only thing I could feel were my two holes where those rack things went in and the actual larascopic wound around my belly button. But I felt no pain internally by the second day of the op. May be there was some "memory pain" from the gas they pumped in, but for me that was very very minor. But then I'm probably one of your lighter candidates with a pre-op BMI of 36. I figure the heavier you are perhaps the more gas they would have to pump to keep the "ceiling of operation" up and the more pain you would feel post op.

The biggest thing I would think for you at this time would be the liquid only diet, which will make you hungry all the time. I know I was for the first week as I average only 500 calories per day and wound up losing nearly 16 lbs in 7 days. Try to drink some un-diluted sports drink which has more calories that might give you a bit more ooomph than I had. I basically did NOT want to move around at all for the first week becuz I knew I had no "go juice" in me from what "they" were giving me (that inluded my mom's strict following of the recommended menu that had zero taste for a whole week before I got strained apple juice and strained clear chicken broth which felt like meals fit for kings at the time compared to the third world prison diet I was getting the first 7 days).

Hope that helps!

[weho 103]

Sounds like you are doing well! Hope mine goes as smoothly as yours. Good luck with the rest of your recovery period.

[dudeman 0]

Just a word on the pain post-op -- I didn't want to make it sound like it was pain-less. My surgery was at noon. Doctor found a non-maligned bump on my liver and spent an hour extra to wedge that out. Turned out to be something call FHP that occurs 80% in women and very rare in men. He theorized it resulted from synthetic estrogen by-product ingested from heating plastic packaging with too much microwave heated foods. I was guilty of that roughly 10 years ago when single and un-careful about what I ate .. anyhoot, the pain when I woke from general anesthesia -- was about 9 on the scale of 10. So, my button pushing on the morphine drip was about once every 20 minutes or so when I was resting but awake. I could not sleep much during the 3 nights in the hospital (stayed a night extra on my mom's insistence). So, MORPHINE .. it's necessary and NOT OPTIONAL ... you should be informed that morphine causes BP to drop, which is why they weened me off ASAP when I was walking around with the drip stand and not showing too much post-op pain by the next afternoon. Again, if you need lots of gas pumped in as called for by your surgeon, you're going to be experiencing more pain than I did which was slightly over 24 hours post-op. Morphine post-op VSG is your friend. Believe me.