Home from the hospital
Can someone tell me when they felt like a normal perdon again with no pain and no nasuea?
Everyone is going to be different. Their health, pain tolerance, healing process all play an important role in everyone's individual recovery. I think it's important for people to hear both sides of the experience also. I, myself, had pain the first day when getting up or down but with the morphine, it wasn't intolerable. (I have a very high tolerance to pain, always have. ) The next day, I had nausea really bad and threw up every time I drank anything. (Pure green stomach acid) They got my meds straightened out for nausea, and I stopped my pain meds because I thought the morphine was increasing the nausea. My pain, unbelievable as it is, didn't get any worse when I stopped the morphine, but the nausea got a lot better. I was up walking the halls day 2 and had my catheter pulled. I stayed an extra day (3) to avoid dehydration due to nausea on day two. I then walked myself out of the hospital and through the parking lot the next morning first thing to go home and since I wasn't on pain meds, I drove the 1 1/2 hrs drive home. I have been doing dishes, laundry, and light duty household stuff ever since I got home with minimal pain. I am 16 days post op now and I am back to all my normal activities, cooking, cleaning, driving, church, shopping, etc with no major problems. My only post op problem has been with esophagus spasms which are eliminated by antispasmodic drugs and my glucose has dropped really low a few times and I got really weak and short of breath. I have followed my doctors diet orders to a T plus walking in the hospital and when I got home was the key to working the soreness out. Even though it was very painful the first two days to get up and down, the more I did it, the better I felt. I hope you feel better soon. The liquids were and are a struggle for me. Just because it is a constant in order to get them all in without feeling overly full or bloated. I am glad you shared your story with everyone on here. It gets better and better each day. Everyone that asks me about my surgery experience is ready to jump right in to have one, thinking my surgery experience is an example of how theirs will be. Not so. I try to explain that I have had two knee surgeries, two hand surgeries, and gallbladder surgery before and never took pain meds past the post op recovery room phase. I am blessed with high pain tolerance. Not everyone is. I have heard experiences that were bad. Not that those people were weak, whimpy, or anything like that. It's just that their pain tolerance and individual needs may be different than others. Everyone should look at their past experiences with injuries and surgeries and the recoveries from those to get an idea of how they will do with this or any surgery.
I felt the same way and even commented to several people that if I knew what I know now (still in the hospital 2 days after surgery) that I wouldn't have done it.
Now, 1 week out, I'm already getting a feeling of hopefullness and the future being pretty good.
Give it a few days, I'm sure you'll feel much better, and don't go easy on the pain meds either, use them as often as you can.
"...the sun is the same in a relative way but were older, shorter of breath, and one day closer to death..." Pink Floyd
M1(22);
You just had 85 percent of your stomach ripped out of yourself. I sure hope you didn't think you was going to go out and run a marathon right away. Give it a few days, everybody is different and you will do great. Take a look at my signature and live every day with that in your head. Good luck. Bob
Failure IS NOT an Option
After surgery when they sent me to my room i had no pain meds for 2 hours before they got that worked out with pharmacy. I was very painful and I wanted my pain meds. I understand that it is painful. once i received my pain meds i started to walk the floor of the hospital every 1/1/2 hours. until next evening they sent me home. I was lucky i had no nausea. Walk, walk, walk, walk it may be uncomfortable but it will help and get better everyday if you walk. You dont have to walk far just do it often. The more you move the faster you will recover. Even when you get home for the first week to 10 days walk every hour to hour and 1/2 3-5 min walk 8 house down and back that is what i did. by my 10 th day i was not in any pain only had tenderness in my upper abdomen if i touch it or laid on it. I was tired often so rested a lot i was only on clear liquids and not protein shakes. On my 10 day my doc released me to soft high protein foods and to start walking on my treadmill. I walk 20 min which i do a mile. I will slowly increase my speed and time as i feel up to it. Do not push your self to much only what you can handle. You will feel tired a lot so do rest as you need to; Im working on my 4 th week out and will be going back to work Monday. I work at a hospital so i have a very physical job so i had to take 4 weeks to return to full duty. I have lost 23 lbs so far and I can breath so much better know. I had shortness of breath with walking before and this weight loss has allowed me to breath better and im walking on a treadmill with out getting short of breath. For me this is the best thing that i have ever done to lose weight. Im still early on and have more weight to get off but this has given me the tool to lose it permanently. One day when i reach my goal weight i will be able to come off meds that cause some bad side effects. So give it some time the first 2-3 weeks are the hardest but it does get better and remember this is a life style change. And there will always be ups and downs through out life. Try not to focus on the downs and look to the ups. We all have different experiences here hope this helps you hope you fell better soon and we here at HO do care about you. Keep us updated on how your doing. I do hope you feel better soon and will keep you in my prayers.
Jen
