The Tale

I've thought many times about coming back here and saying something, but to be honest, nothing I have been able to come up with has seemed to be sufficient.

I guess I need to go back and tell the tale.

I showed up at the hospital, and things moved very quickly at first.  I was shown to the little pre-surgery room, put on the dreaded paper gown, was moved to the holding area where my IV was put in and all the many people who were going to be involved in my surgery came in and talked with me, checked on me, and asked me my name and date of birth so many times that I really wish I had gone with my first instinct and put it on a dry erase board that I could have just held up.  There was a delay because my doctor was assisting with another surgery, and then it was my turn.  As with everything that relates to me or my family, once the procedure began, the situation got more complicated than my doctor anticipated.  There were more problems than they'd previously been able to detect due to the three other abdominal surgeries I've had in the past.  A general surgeon had to be called in to deal with part of it.  It took three hours to take me apart and then put me back together again.

Blessedly, I remember none of that.  The last thing I recall was the surgery team coming to collect me and asking if I was ready, to which I replied by telling the nurse anesthetist that I didn't want to know anything about any of it past that point, not the roll down the hall, not the color of the operating room (which I know for a fact was blue because they are ALWAYS BLUE and cold), nothing.  He grinned, injected something into my IV, and told me that would no problem at all.  The world spun hard to the right, my gurney moved, and the next thing I recall was a brusque nurse in recovery continually telling me that I had to breathe, BREATHE, to which I finally managed to mumble that it HURT to breathe and I wanted her to leave me alone.  I think she laughed.

I remember nothing of the rest of Monday.

The big events of Tuesday included a clean gown, staggering horrible trips to the bathroom, a couple of family visitors, and a migraine as big as the universe.  Apparently, the morphine in the pain pump triggered some kind of rebound headache.  And, since I had the morphine in my system, I couldn't have any of the medicines I would usually take for a migraine.  I decided to stop using the pain pump so they would unhook it and also so the backlash from it would hopefully stop.  I wanted to scream, but it would have hurt too much.  Early Wednesday morning, they finally came in with a solution, a combination of drugs that wouldn't react with the morphine.

They were from hell.  I'd never had one of the two, and the new one spiked my blood pressure and heart rate so high my room was a festival of flashing lights and shrieking monitors.  My body locked up and shuddered, my teeth chattered, and I couldn't breathe.  For a short time, it was so bad that I honestly thought I was going to die right there with my mother holding my hand.  Again, I was continually told to BREATHE, which seemed to be the motto of my whole experience, and when I didn't do it deeply enough to keep them happy with the O2 level in my blood, they put me back on that horrible little oxygen tube-nose thing.  I was told later that the first attack like that lasted about twenty minutes before that effect passed.  There were two or three episodes like that before everything calmed down and all the beeping and flashing quit. So Tuesday passed into Wednesday.

After that, things got better. I got to take a shower and put on real people clothing that didn't bare my backside.  I put on my bright blue TARDIS robe, leaned on Mom and the rails around the hospital ward walls, and staggered unsteadily up and down, up and down the brightly lit hallways.  I ate some solid food.  I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Egg Bowl from my bed after the doctor making the rounds decided I needed one more day in the hospital.  The following day, I carefully pressed the little red PillowPet dragon my mother had decided to call Surge (short for Surgery, apparently) over my aching belly, and the nurse rolled me downstairs and out into the cold, bright world.

Since then, I've been getting better daily.  I have been able to drive a little, and Sunday I went out to eat with my family.  Tonight, I went to a Christmas party for the choir, and I tottered down the hall to the organ in the sanctuary to play for a little while because I look forward to playing Christmas music all year long.  I am a little sore and a lot tired, but each new thing I manage to do is a victory.  Based on everything I've read, I'm moving through this slow process like I'm supposed to.

Things are different now, though.

There are the physical differences.  I've lost about twenty pounds, and weight continues to slip off me.  I don't hurt inside all the time.  Even though I don't have tons of energy, I still feel better than I did before the surgery.  I have had a couple of headaches, but they've been negligible.

Then there are the other differences.  It seems dramatic to say it, but the version of me who rolled into that operating room died there.  This version of me who rolled out is someone else.  I'd been living in silent and growing fear of this surgery for over ten years.  I hadn't realized how much it had accumulated or how heavy a burden it was until it lifted.  Certain dreams I have had, certain hopes for what my future holds are also gone now.  Other things are going to have to take the place of those dreams, and I'm not exactly sure what those will be.  On the other hand, certain restrictions my condition has caused for me are also gone now, and despite the uncertainty, I can't help but feel oddly liberated because of that.

So now I'm on the other side of this milestone I've been running from for so very, very long.  I'm tottering around and regaining my strength.  I'm re-evaluating, re-organizing, removing, even redecorating.  I'm making plans....slowly.  It's enough.  I have to believe that the worst is past, and now it's time to move on to whatever is next.