Sunday, May 15, 2011

Still resting...

Monday I went in for Moh's surgery. The procedure was quick and pretty painless. They gave me a local anesthesia on the site where they would be working, so I didn't feel a thing. Then they bandaged me up with a pressure bandage and told me to leave the bandage on for 48 hours. If they got the results back and not all the cancer was gone, they would have me come back on Wednesday and do more work. If the results showed that they got all the cancer, I would be able to go to the plastic surgeon on Thursday to have repair work done.

So Tuesday and Wednesday I got to go to work with this lovely thing on my head.

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Pretty hot, amirite?

I took that picture right before I took the bandage off (Wednesday evening, after it had been 48 hours). I don't know what I was expecting, but I almost passed out when I saw what was under there. I finally had to get my husband to change the bandage for me. I'm not normally squeamish, but I totally wimped out.

Thursday I was supposed to get to the surgery center at 12:30pm and couldn't eat or drink after 6:30am. So I set my alarm for 6:00 so I could have a little breakfast. Well, I woke up with the worst migraine I've had in years, I tried to drink water and threw it up. I'll spare you the details but I spent most of the morning throwing up before I finally called the surgery center to see what I should do. They suggested I take my normal migraine meds (even though they contain asprin) to try to get the migraine under control, but I just threw that up as well. Then they told me to just go ahead and come in and they would start my IV meds early.

I was relieved they still wanted me to come in, I was afraid they would say they couldn't do the operation. Everyone at the Texas Institute for Surgery was so nice and understanding. The nurses went out of their way to make sure I was comfortable, knowing how bad I felt. Once they started my IV, I felt so much better. The plastic surgeon and the anesthesiologist were very nice and explained what all was going to happen. They let Michael stay with me all the way up until they wheeled me into the operating room. I remember them moving me onto the operating table and after that I was out cold.

After surgery, they took me to a nice recovery area (lots of other patients, but we were all seperated by curtains so it felt somewhat private). They brought me water and graham crackers and Michael got to come sit with me. The plastic surgeon came over and showed me before and after pictures he had taken of the site. I have a line of stitches running from my hairline down to my eyebrow. Still kinda gross, but not nearly as gross as before!

Anyway, I've spent the weekend just resting. I haven't had too much pain, I've been taking prescription pain killers every 4 hours to keep it that way. On Thursday I get my stitches out and I'll see what the doctor says about activity and so forth after that.

I'm not going to lie, I've been a little antsy about not being able to work out. Plus the weather has been beautiful, there is nothing I want more than to go for a run! I hope by next weekend I'll be able to.

Hope everyone has a happy and healthy week!

1 comment:

Lisa said...

That sounds like quite the process! Glad everything went pretty well and your pain meds are helping. Hope you can get back to workouts soon. But rest now and heal up!