There and back again...

So I'm here, sans ostomy, and feeling great. But how did I get to this point? Well, lets go over the last 24 hours or so. We (my mother and I) arrived in Madison yesterday at about 6:30 yesterday evening. After checking into the hotel (the process of which involved my saying "what a production" to my mother several times in exasperation), I decided to take in some of the local cinema. As I had not eaten since lunch, and would not eat anytime in the foreseeable future, I decided that it would be a good idea to distract myself. Once I returned from the 2 1/2 hour epic of The Dark Knight, I began the next stage of my preparations for today (the first of which was self-imposed starvation). Earlier that day I purchased from Walgreens what looked like something that you would find in the supply closet of a doctor's office in California recently after the Louisiana Purchase. It was a sizeable bottle of grape-flavored, carbonated laxative called Magnesium Citrate. When I returned to the hotel, I consumed the entire bottle with a water chaser, and waited. The idea of using a laxative is slightly disturbing for me normally, but now I was using one to hurry things along in a rather non-traditional way. Within a half-hour, my ostomy bag began filling at a break-neck pace. Much more than the equivalent of the bottle's contents passed through me, which would come into play the next day. As I was looking forward to being free of the bondage of the ostomy, I let my guard down and the little bugger got the best of me one last time. I don't know if any of you have tried to empty a bag filled with liquid and attached to your body at 2:00 AM, but trust me when I say to maintain your diligence in such cases. I took for granted the fact that I was a veteran with such tasks, and failed to notice the rather large gap in between the toilet seat, and toilet bowl at the hotel. I figured that once I cleared the seat, I was home-free. Unfortunately, this was not the case. As I opened my ostomy bag for what would be one of the last times, a torrential flood of my remaining fecal matter came pouring through the aforementioned gap. My old nemesis was apparently not letting me go without a fight. While such an event would have been a source of frustration two months ago, now as I was so close to being relieved of my omnipresent burden, it was nothing more than an annoyance and slightly comical.

The remainder of that night was spent without incident. I awoke this morning, eager to get to the hospital. We arrived at 7:40 AM and were told to check in at admissions. After giving my name to the hospital worker, I was offered the information that I was at the wrong facility. I say 'offered' because I replied with, "No, you are wrong lady." She said that I was wrong (big mistake) and that I had an appointment on the other side of town at a non-surgical facility with a doctor who wasn't a surgeon. I replied with, "Well, I am having surgery, and it is not happening there. So thanks, but no thanks." I immediately left and went to the office where I knew my surgeon worked out of. I asked a woman there to look up my appointment and admit me. Shortly after this, the previously mentioned ignoramous came chasing after me and telling me that she found the appointment for today. The other appointment that she was looking at was scheduled for January of 2009. Way to instill me with confidence. If they can't even find the right appointment, how would they find the right body part to operate on? Fortunately, I have the utmost confidence in my surgical staff. Nonetheless, I did double check several times that they would be performing the correct procedure.

I then checked in for my surgery and was quickly ushered off to my prep room. After dispensing with the regular pleasantries, we jumped right into sticking me with as many needles as possible. First, we needed to get some baseline blood tests. Normally, not an issue. Remember the high output in my ostomy bag the night before, well apparently that resulted in me being pretty well dehydrated. Unknown to me, a side-effect of dehydration is that your veins are not very full, and don't really put out much blood. We arrived at this conclusion after attempting twice in vain to get some blood out of me. Then another old friend arrived to welcome me, the heparin shot. The nurse wasted no time in reaquainting us. We were then down to the IV. This is also not a big deal normally these days as I have received more than I can remember. The IV went in without a hitch. However (there is always a however), the anesthesiologist who put it in must have found the one good vein left in my body, and it resulted in my blood leaking all over myself, the bed, and the floor. I chose not to observe these events, but I would imagine that it would look something like a butcher shop counter right before the Fourth of July. After cleaning up my blood with what I believe was a spill kit normally intended for jack-knifed tankers on the interstate, I was given my IV cocktail to relax me and then was whisked off to the operating room.

After receiving my cocktail, they could have done anything to me. But they just operated. The last thing that I remember is being told to breath four times with a mask over my mouth. I made it to about 2 1/2.

I woke up in the recovery room feeling pretty good. The procedure took under two hours. I was pretty sleepy, but I was excited to be rid of the ostomy, so I didn't sleep too much. I hung out down there with a bunch of really ornery patients. I overheard many patients complaining, and many doctors trying to satiate them. One of my favorite lines was delivered very deadpan from a doctor. He said, "We can't give you that much pain killer. It would result in death." Needless to say, the doctors and nurses were sorry to see me go.

I was then brought up to the familiar confines of the F4 section of the hospital. This is the same area that I stayed in before. I got checked in, met the new residents, said hi to some of my old nurses, and began to settle in. Before long, I was visited by yet another old friend, the familiar feeling of liquid leaking from my ostomy site. "That is impossible," I thought, "I no longer have an ostomy." To my relief, if was merely blood leaking from my dressing. Oddly enough, that is much less distressing than fecal matter. Well, maybe not too oddly. The blood continued to be a problem, but with an absurd amount of gauze taped to my belly, we got it under control. I guess that it is supposed to drain a little bit. Shortly after we stopped all of my bleeding, I was finally visited by my surgeon, Dr. Heise. He was pleased with how the operation went, but was pretty annoyed when he noticed what appeared to be a hematoma in my incision site.

Quick medical lesson. A hematoma can be caused by many things, one of these is an infection in part of your body. Apparently, there may be a little infected area under my skin, but over my muscle. The body seals this little infected area off, and then it needs to be opened up and drained at some point. I inquired as to how this is performed. Dr. Heise said that I would just come in to the clinic and they just slice it open, not really much anesthesia. So that should be fun. He did say that if we could get it to bleed out, then it would be okay. I would have to apply a lot of pressure to my incision site though. All of this after finally getting it to stop bleeding. I'll probably opt for the under-sedated slicing.

The remainder of my evening was spent attempting to urinate under the threat of having a catheter inserted (I didn't have ANY tubes coming out of me when I woke up this time) and ambulating. I think that nurses always use the catheter as a threat in order to scare the pee out of me. I went for a pretty long walk with my nursing assistant. We walked all around the floor. Upon return to my room, I noticed a slight, but increasing pain in my right side. She said that it was gas that had moved from when I was walking. I guess that I never realized it before, but trapped gas can be extremely painful. On the frowning face scale of pain, it was definitely a frown with some water come out of its eyes. I explained this to my NA, who responded with a look that seemed to say, "Are you serious? What a wuss." After continuing to complain of what must have felt like a heart attack, she supplied me with some heating pads which were supposed to help. The pain receded after a few minutes, and now I am fine, but man, it was no fun for a little bit.

Anyway, I am getting tired, and that is probably more than anyone wants to read anyway. I'll provide another update in the morrow.