What a great online community this is! For the BTDT's - what is your best advice

[citimom 0]

last days before hospital/ :confused:for the hosiptal? first days home?

[ellemay 0]

Keep busy beforehand. Took my mind of the awful shakes I had to have for pre-op.

Afterwards take it easy, get plenty of rest and sip Water all day so you don't dehydrate. I gulped it down a few times and boy did it hurt those first few days.

Good Luck!!

[Wheetsin 714]

What's a BTDT?

[citimom 0]

Been There Done That

[IndioGirl55 32]

last days before hospital/ :confused:for the hosiptal? first days home?

The day before was the easiest not to eat for me - I don't eat when i am nervouse

Surgery is diff for everyone - but to me the 1st 6 hours are the worst but you have the pain meds to get you through it - when i 1st woke up in my room felt like an elephant had kicked me and still had his foot on my tummy. I had surgery around 7 a.m. by 6 pm that night i was better - in fact they took away my pain pump (the kind that you can push button to get meds) I pushed alot those first few hour - and i panic when they took it away - pain shots helped through out the night and didn't need anything after that.. Was back to work on day 6...

[Wheetsin 714]

D'oh! :doh:

This will give you a good idea as to how much people vary.

My surgery was a Wednesday. Until that morning, there were two times I felt nervous, for about 5 minutes each. The first was right after I made the appointment, as I was walking out. This sort of "Oh shit I'm really doing this" panic/nervousness hit me. The second was the Saturday before my surgery. I have no idea why nervousness hit, but it did.

Then not a hint of anything remotely resembling nervousness until I was in the gown and had to get back into the bed. THAT was hard to do. I had a little panic attack. First time in my life.

I had a 2 day pre-op diet. I had planned this big elaborate dinner for my "last meal" but when we got down to it, I didn't give a crap. So my fancy dinner out became BLTs in front of the TV watching a dumb Jackie Chan movie.

The night before surgery I went to bed early and slept through the entire night. The next morning I was very aware of what was going on, but not nervous at all. It was more like - going to work, you know? I am very task-oriented, so it was like I was just processing it as something I had to do.

I came out of anesthesia very quickly. When asked to rate my pain, I said "like a half." I really felt no pain, but for some reason I thought it would be wrong to say that. Within an hour I had requested to leave, been approved, and was on my way home. I had no gas pain, no ill effects from the anesthesia, etc. (This was my first surgery so I had expected much worse, from the horror stories.)

I never had much pain other than the pain from my port area. This hurt when I would move, but I had no pain at all when I was at rest. I had a large stomach/pannus, and found that by supporting the weight of it with my arm, a lot of the pain was relieved. After that, my trips to the potty weren't so bad. Getting up, sitting down, sneezing, hiccups, coughing -- anything moving the abdominal muscles still caused pain but it was completely bearable.

I had DH bring a recliner up from his home theater room. This is what I lived in for the first day and a half. Surgery was on a Wed. I pretty much slept off the rest of the day in the recliner, all that night, and until around noon on Thursday. Thursday night was in the recliner too. Friday I made it - very slowly - into my own bed, propped up on a lot of pillows. Friday I also went to Target and walked around, leaning on the cart. Thursday I went to GNC to get more Protein powder since I spilled mine (!), and I felt ok, but I wouldn't advocate going out the next day. By Saturday I felt generally good and we took a car trip out of town to see my parents. Piece of cake from then on, minus the occasional twinge in the port area (this lasted about 5 weeks).

[citimom 0]

Thank you for your thoughtful responses :kiss2: