First, I have to apologize for putting off the surgery posts
for so long. However, you must know that I have not been postponing these posts
because I have been sick. Instead I have been finally planning my wedding,
helping my fiancé build our first house, and focusing on getting back to work.
So, needless to say these two intense surgeries gave me my life back.
Now to get to the stuff you want to read about. Surgery
number 1 took place on September 30th, 2013. Before surgery you have
to do the same awful prep you do for a colonoscopy. UGH!! The good news is this is the last time
in your life you will ever ever have to taste that horrible junk. This was
painful for me though. I mean like miserable. If you have had severe UC and
prepared for a colonoscopy you know this is like adding fuel to the already
very persistent fire of UC. I truthfully didn’t know if I was going to get
through the prep. Another important side note about prepping for surgery is I
was only on 10mg of Pred for a week prior to surgery. I had stopped the cimzia
injections for about a month and a half before surgery. This is ideal, because
you and your surgeon prefer that your immune system not be completely shot
prior to surgery.
The surgery took 7 hours total. This surgery takes a long
time, because well, a lot happens in this surgery. Also my surgeon did the
laparoscopic assisted version of this surgery, which takes longer. This means
that instead of having a long vertical incision, I had 3 teeny tiny incisions
on my belly and 1 horizontal incision about 4 inches long right along my
underwear line. First your entire
large intestine (your colon), including your rectum is removed. Second the
j-pouch is created. This is the process in which the surgeon uses your small
intestine to create a pouch that acts as a new colon and rectum for your body.
It is called a j-pouch because if you look at an anatomical picture of an
ileoanal anastomosis it looks like the letter J. This second step is the most
time consuming part of the surgery. Third the surgeon has to create a temporary loop ileostomy (the bag).
This allows your new pouch he/she just created for you to heal without passing
stool through it for about 8 weeks. The loop ileostomy is a small hole in your
stomach in which part of your small intestine is pulled through and allows
stool to leave your body this way…through a hole in your stomach into a bag.
That’s crazy stuff, but I’m thankful for it. It beats the hell out of bloody
mucus coming through a jacked up colon a gazillion times a day.
OK so, after 7 hours of surgery I didn’t wake up for about 2
hours. That’s because the time is
takes to awaken from anesthesia is proportional to the time you are under
anesthesia. When I woke up I was
still really groggy and don’t remember a lot of the immediate events that
followed. My family told me some pretty funny stuff though. Once I woke up to
where I could realize what was going on I realized I had all of the things
hooked to me:
1. 2
IVs, this is where your fluids and pain medication go into you.
2. A
pain pump (which is hooked to your IV machine, not to you) but it’s another
cord in your bed. This allows you to press a button that will deliver you pain
medication. I could hit mine every ten minutes for the first few days
3. 2
drains. These are pretty gruesome to look at if you are not use to this kind of
thing.
4. A
urinary catheter … luckily they took that out pretty soon
5. My
new temporary ileostomy bag.
I have a picture of all this I will post at the end.
It was the second day that I realized this surgery is a BIG,
HUGE, MAJOR, SURGERY! To put it into perspective, recently someone I know of
had a 5 way heart bypass surgery. This person was in the hospital for 3
days. I was in the hospital for 5
days. This person is overweight, older than I am, and I’m assuming in much
worse general health since their surgery was on their heart.
Anyways, I realized it, because I tried to walk. First I
guess I should say that first night I when I would try to roll over, I had to
have help from a nurse and an aid. This sucked. Rolling over, sitting up all of
that, it sucks. It’s painful. It’s not as painful as UC. So day 2 I was
walking, and I walked every day there after. They will make you walk. It’s good
for you. You need to do it to promote circulation and keep your blood from
clotting. OH! Something more horrible than sitting up, rolling over etc. is
coughing!! Holy cow. Four weeks post op I still wouldn’t cough. It is such a
weird feeling.
Day 3 a stoma nurse came in and briefly taught me how to
care for my new temporary ostomy.
Um. I was on pain meds. In pain, and half asleep. I picked up nothing that she
said. Luckily I recently graduated nursing school, so a little bit I was like
yea yea yea. However, I really would have been screwed had I not had a home
nurse for the first few weeks I was home with my new stoma, and again I am a
nurse, a new nurse, but a nurse. So, I would suggest definitely getting home
care for at least the first few weeks.
After this post I am going to have a whole post about how I felt about
the stoma and how I cared for it. The main thing to remember is it’s only for 8
weeks.
Day 4 They took away my beloved pain pump. I didn’t realize
how helpful the pump was until they took it away. Also, a side note: I slept a
looootttt in the hospital. Well the self administering pain medication doesn’t
work if you are asleep and cannot push the button yourself. Luckily my family
is awesome and someone was with me at all times. They would push the button for
me every now and then when I was asleep for me. You are NOT supposed to do
this. They wouldn’t push every ten minutes, which I never did when I was awake
either, but they did probably every half hour. This kept me from waking up in
pretty intense pain. They take you off of the pain pump the day before you go
home, because you need to be able to know that you can manage your pain on oral
pain medication before going home.
Day 5 I went home. Before going home they take out your
IV(s) and remove your drains. This doesn’t hurt, but is kind of a weird
feeling. I recommend going home in a larger vehicle. Small cars have a hard time going over bumps and it hurts.
Being home is tough. There are a lot of things at the
hospital that you may not have at home that help you. For instance, when you
get up in the hospital, you will most likely raise the head of the bed first
and that sits you up. Therefore, keeping you from having to use your stomach
muscles to sit up. Also when you lay down, you would use that same feature of
the bed to help you lay down in the hospital. Well I (and probably most of you)
do not have a moving bed at home, so laying down and sitting up is all on your
own. Its best to roll to one side and use your arm to push yourself up rather
than using your stomach muscles. But anyways this is hard at home. So to
improvise I slept in a recliner for about a week at home.
Closing this post I will say this, I had a pretty easy time
with surgery compared to some of the horror stories I read before surgery. The
only complication I had was the expected and normal surgical pain. Once I was
home one of my oral pain meds (Percocet) made me extremely nauseous. This was
pretty miserable until it wore off and I threw it away because I’d rather be in
pain than be that nauseous.
My next post, which I promise will not take 2 months, will
be about caring for the temporary
ileostomy, how I felt about it, and how I dealt with is emotionally. I keep
bolding the word temporary, because it’s so very important when making this
decision to realize that is a minor part of the big picture and it is just
that, temporary. I hope this post
answered some questions about the surgical process and hospital stay. If you
have anymore please feel free to e-mail me or post a comment. My next post will
answer all of your ostomy questions and be a lot funnier haha!
These are the drains. They were on the opposite side of my stoma.
