Bloody Confusing

I've had several operations/procedures done on me in the past that were either outpatient or involved single-day hospital stays. Every one of them has given me trouble in the days following the procedure. As I mentioned earlier, I have problems with some sedatives and anaesthetics surpressing my breathing reflex, and on occasion the effect has lasted for days after the procedure. (Try sleeping when you have to consciously remind yourself to breathe at times - that's what it's like.)

Other procedures have left me feeling like I've been buried under a pile of a dozen wet blankets. I have a hard time staying awake for any length of time and can't get up, turn over, or do any kind of moving easily. At least I don't have to concentrate on breathing when facing this type of post-op discomfort.

The gastric bypass left me feeling closer to the dozen wet blanket side of things, but without the problems of being unable to get up or move. I had trouble waking up, but when I did attain consciousness, I could get up and move around if I needed to do so.  After I had gotten over the problem with the lemon-flavored pain medicine (see previous update), I was actually pleasantly surprised with the degree of mobility I had.

(Note:  Here comes the part I warned you about at the end of the last update.  Skip to the next update unless you want the dirty details, which are provided in generous quantity below.)

One other particular problem I've had with gastrointestinal procedures is post-op constipation. Sometimes it's taken me a week after surgery before I have been able to have a bowel movement. At worst it's taken almost three weeks, as was the case when my appendix was removed back in 1983.  It's never a comfortable affair, regardless of the duration, and finally passing a stool can be more painful than the period of constipation had been.

Things were very different this time. I actually needed to go to the bathroom, not too long after arriving home. I remember being rather surprised that I was actually able to have a bowel movememtn so soon after having a major gastric operation. However, I also remember having a hard time staying awake while sitting on the toilet. I did nod off a few times, but I always caught myself before suffering the humiliation of falling off the throne in mid-dump.

I had several bowel movements between Saturday evening and Sunday and continued to be somewhat surprised that I was going.  However, in retrospect I should have instead been worried about what was happening inside of me.  Each movement involved black, tarry stools, something I'd never experienced before but had certainly heard of. Black, tarry stools mean that blood is coming out of one's body by way of the intestines, but since I'd just had a major stomach operation I figured I was just passing blood that had entered my GI tract during surgery. My wife thought the same, but at the same time she was concerned about a "funny smell" (her words) that hung around after each bowel movement despite the best efforts of the bathroom vent fan to clear the air.

My wife tells me she started getting really concerned towards Sunday noon when she began having more and more trouble getting me to wake up for pain medicine doses and other things like eating popsicles and so on. As mentioned earlier, I'd had problems waking up in after surgery in the past and wasn't very concerned about this myself, but my wife said this time was worse that any she'd dealt with during my previous recoveries. She says the situation eventually got so bad that she decided to call the surgeon's office (I don't honestly know if she talked to a nurse or the doctor himself) and tell them that she was having trouble waking me up. She told them that I was "lethargic and unresponsive," and expressed her concerns about the "funny smell" after bowel movements to them.  She says the person on the other end of the phone didn't seem very worried and didn't even give a "hmmm..." to the funny smell issue.

The doctor's office gave her two options: either bring me in to the office on Monday, or take me to the Emergency Room now if she thought I was really that bad off. She chose the latter. Again in retrospect, if she'd waited until Monday you'd probably be reading an obituary instead of this blog, so despite what happened later that day in the ER, her actions likely saved my life.
 
(To be continued...)

Trouble In Stealth Mode

One uneventful trip home later and I'm sitting on our sofa with my right side pretty much propped up by the arm cushion and my head leaning back with my face pointed at the ceiling. I'm feeling very groggy and am occasionally falling asleep sitting up. No serious nausea, though, and fortunately no apparent problems with my breathing reflex.

My wife left to get my pain medicine prescription filled, which turned out to be a much more difficult task than you would imagine (partly my fault). The scrip was for hydrocodone elixir (i.e., liquid), so I asked her if she'd get the pharmacist to put a flavor in it to help it go down a bit easier. I was thinking grape or cherry, but I didn't have the wits about me to mention either of these. In short, I left the flavor choice up to her, and for some unknown reason she decided that lemon would be good for a person who has just had his stomach rearranged. So, she asked for and brought home lemon-flavored hydrocodone.

Note: Pain medicine isn't intended to *cause* pain.

The dose she gave me went down my throat for the most part, but a bit of it backwashed and tried to climb up into my sinuses. Neither direction handled things very well - think having a blowtorch fired at your uvula. One coughing fit later, I told her in a voice flavored with misery that there was no way I'd be able to take any more doses of the mixture she'd brought home. She huffed and did her best to keep me from realizing she was pissed at me, and then set out to trade the lemon-flavored lava for regular hydrocodone elixir, no incendiary flavor added.

She went back to the pharmacy that filled the scrip, only to find that it closed early because it was a Saturday. She did eventually get the prescription swapped, but only after driving 30 minutes to the only 24-hour branch of that particular pharmacy and doing god knows how much pleading to get them to transfer the prescription and reissue it in its normal nasty-tasting state. I have no idea exactly how long this took, because I had again passed out on the same spot of the sofa.

I spent most of the rest of the night without moving from that spot. She brought an alarm clock into the living room so that she could sleep on the other part of the sofa and still be able to give me the pain medicine at the proper times.

My memories for the rest of the night and most of Sunday are a bit hazy, but there are a few incidents that I can recall with extreme clarity. Unfortunately, some of these involve some basic bodily input/output functions, so if you don't like that sort of stuff you might want to skip over the next update when it gets posted.