2.19.2013

Slice me open and pour me out: the surgery to remove my dermoid cysts

After the MRI, the doctor determined that a laporotomy would be the best way to get my dermoid cysts removed.  He asked us at each preoperative visit if we wanted more children.  Our sleep deprived faces would sag and we would admit that it was a distant possibility.  My son was 4 weeks old at the time of the MRI.  The surgery was scheduled for his 6th week in the world.

I don't remember much about the detailed results of the surgery. I do remember going in.

My husband and I went in to the surgery prep area.  I had an oversized room, white and bright with diffuse sunlight. A huge white curtain hung from the ceiling and seemed to move in the wind like laundry on the line on a breezy summer day.  The nurse questioned me about my health history and whether I had taken the medications and stopped eating so that my intestines would be empty in case a nick opened them inside my abdominal cavity.  She gave me a hideous hospital gown and left me to empty my bladder and change.  When I was ready she tried and failed to start an IV.  She called in the big guns, the "blood man".  His sole job in the hospital is to get blood from a stone, I mean a patient with difficult veins.  He got my IV started on the first try.

I vaguely remember that the nurse explained they would start a sedative through the IV.  I think I remember being rolled out into the hall on a bed.  Then I remember waking up on a rolling bed, maybe the same one, shivering.  I was aware of several similar beds around me occupied by other people in various states of consciousness.  There was one man who was talking loudly, perhaps shouting.  Was he talking nonsense or was it just my impaired brain not comprehending what he was trying so hard to impart?  No, it was him, not me.  A nurse was trying to calm him with words, then I think some people had to hold him down.  They were explaining to him that he was coming out of the anesthesia.  That must be what I was doing.  Why was I shivering?

The nurse came over to ask how I was doing and explain the medications they had given me and the process of coming out of them.  She asked how I was doing. 

"Fine," I said.  "I'm shivering and I can't seem to stop," I added as an afterthought as she began to walk away. 

"Oh, that is sometimes a side effect of the anesthesia.  I can put a medication in your IV that will stop it." 

Good, it wasn't a permanent state of being, it was a known thing, something that could be controlled in this bizarre room that seemed a little out of control.

At some point they wheeled me into my recovery room, my home for the next few days. Due to the undisclosed amount of weight I had gained during my pregnancy, they hesitated to transfer me to my hospital bed.  One nurse said, "She can help us.  You can scoot over a bit at a time, right?" 

Could I?  My insides had just been cut open and dissected.  I had a huge hole, probably neatly stitched, somewhere on my body.  Wouldn't I writhe in pain, wouldn't the stitches tear,  letting what was left inside spill out?  "Okay," I said.  My mother had raised me to be a good girl.  If the nurse said I should scoot, then I would scoot.  If my organs fell out on the floor in the process, well, I was in a hospital they could put them back in, right?

So I scooted.  I didn't feel pain.  Nothing fell out. Inch by inch I was on my new bed.

My husband came to the hospital to keep me company.  We mostly watched tv and took walks up and down the halls.  My aunt watched my son so I could recover and my husband could stay with me. 

I missed my baby.  We had just started really bonding.  After my mother left and my husband returned to work, it was just me and him.  We got into a routine, nursing while I watched dvd's, napping together, even making it out of the house now and then.  On the other hand I was in no condition to nurture a baby and  I felt a sense of relief to be a single person again, if only for a short while.  It was just me.  Since finding out I was pregnant, this was the first time I was truly alone in my body. 

I was on a liquid only diet for a day.  When I got approval for "solid" foods, I had to poop before they would let me leave the hospital, thus the walks up and down the halls. I shuffled slowly, trying not to use my abdominal muscles.  I had to drag the IV and pole along beside me.  I also had a pain killer in a little pressurized ball the hung from my stomach.  A small tube went through my incision, directly into my abdominal cavity.  I didn't have to use as much pain killer as I may have without it, but it also seemed to be the main cause of my discomfort.

The day that I was to leave the hospital, I had the pain killer ball and tube removed, but I still hadn't had a bowel movement.  In a last ditch effort the doctor prescribed a laxative suppository.  Of course in my condition I couldn't "take" the suppository myself, so a very kind nurse helped me through one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.

The laxative now on board, the doctor gave me the okay to go home.  The ride home was painful.  Every bump in the road sent stabs of pain through my body.  Car rides quickly became one of my least favorite activities.  Once I climbed the two flights of stairs to my apartment,  I went directly to the bathroom.  The laxative had done is job.

I don't remember if we picked my son up on the way home from the hospital or if my husband picked him up later.  We will forever be indebted to my aunt for those three days.

My husband stayed home from work for about a week to help care for me and my son.  I remember struggling to nurse again, and giving up.  My son was fond of kicking during nursing, not a good combination with abdominal stitches.  He had also become fond of the ease of bottle feeding.  My husband was ecstatic that he could feed my son, I was heart broken that I could no longer perform one of the basic functions of a mom.  I also came to hate pumping, and my breasts soon understood that they weren't in high demand anymore.  They slowly started to produce less and less milk during marathon pumping sessions.

At eight weeks, my precious, helpless baby started day care.  He was there full days for a week, then went to part time as I became stronger and more comfortable being a full time mom again.  The week before I started back to work I kept my son with me the whole week.  One last week, just him and me.  Where had the time gone?  I thought it would never end, but it had ended, just like that.

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