This is not a well written entry, it's full of tangents and side thoughts put into parenthesis. Hopefully when I'm not trying to recall a surgery from 3 months ago my brain won't be so jumbled and my normal writing will return.
I honestly don't remember much from surgery prep, except I couldn't eat/drink past a certain time and as they were asking me a bunch of questions in the prep area they asked me if I had a nickname I started to answer about what all my different nicknames were versus what I preferred and I ASSUME I nodded off (this will come up later, so remember it).
"Some people call me Browey/Browie, Broweykins, BroBro, Bro, Brosefer....but I prefer Browen from people I don't know that well." (at least, that's what I remember saying)
Several hours later I woke up in my hospital room with Mike and my Mom (she would move worlds to make sure she was there for her baby) at my side. Someone said, "Hi Bro, how are you feeling?" and I remember thinking it was weird they were calling me Bro, but I brushed it off. I also was freaking out about the NG tube down my throat (necessary because of the type of surgery, they had to pump my abdomen full of gas, and the NG tube was sucking that gas back out and helping to wake up my bowels).
I gave a thumbs up, and am pretty sure I promptly fell asleep. Honestly the first two days are a blur of me sleeping through as much as possible, including my blood being drawn, blood pressure readings, you name it. I know that both my mom and Mike were there while I faded in and out of consciousness, but all I could manage was to sleep.
On the third day, I got to go to the bathroom (and had to call a nurse to check my output EVERY SINGLE TIME). I found walking back and forth from my bed to the bathroom not that hard so I thought the required walk around the nurse's station would be a breeze. I would later find that to be false.
IT TOOK FOREVER to convince them I needed the NG tube out (which was making my voice raspy and felt horrible) and that I was starving hungry. One of my lasting side effects from chemo is that I throw up if I get too hungry (and it happens FAST), so once my stomach had settled from surgery it wanted food. I started throwing up from a lack of food and they thought it was side effects from the surgery. I couldn't convince them otherwise, and it was awful. I was finally able to do clear liquids and when I did well on those, they realized I was hungry, and removed the tube (I threw up while they were removing it as well, that thing is the absolute worst).
Finally getting food in my stomach made me feel so, so much better, even though hospital food is the absolute worst.
It's been just over 3 months since surgery and my voice still hasn't recovered from the NG tube. I sound raspy and quiet. While I'm sure there are MANY people who appreciate the quiet aspect, it's hard to get many people to hear me. I'm not sure I'll ever get my voice back to what it was and am worried about my liver resection, (the hopefully last surgery I'll have!) in that I'll have to have another NG tube placement. BUT, let's not focus on what might be and take each day at a time!
More CRS/HIPEC surgery hospital stories coming up soon!
xoxoxoxo