This is totally me right now.
But let me back up a moment!
My surgery (total abdominal hysterectomy bilateral salpingo oophorectomy – aka they took out all my parts) was a week ago today. The surgery itself was more complicated than they had anticipated, as the endometriosis had progressed quite a bit since December and was attached to all sorts of stuff it shouldn’t have been attached to. And evidently I am a bleeder. So I required the surgeons to really work for their money that day but they did an awesome job and cleared it all out for me and everything turned out just fine.
The first 24 hours afterwards were a bit rough. Jenny arrived to visit shortly after I arrived in my room – before I received my pain medication… which, for some reason, was fairly difficult to acquire. She almost started a #giveEmilydrugs campaign on Twitter, but fortunately it didn’t come to that.
An unfortunate side effect to having surgery so close to one’s bladder is that said bladder becomes very sore and unable to expand to its usual capacity, so the first night I had to go to the bathroom pretty much every hour on the hour. And as those of you who have been in this situation can attest – getting out of bed to do so is no easy process! I had to have Andy unhook me from contraptions on my legs and manage my IV cart and magical ball of pain medicine each time I had to get up and then hook me up to everything when I got back in bed, only to do so again 45 minutes later. It was great fun! But I was so thankful to have him there with me, because calling for the nurses and having to wait on them every time would have been much worse. And he was a great sport about it.
The following day I was feeling better but unsure about whether or not I was ready to go home, which my doc had said was a possibility. Fortunately, she made that decision for me when she came to check on me – my hemoglobin was pretty low because of all the bleeding I did the day before, and she wanted me to stay an additional night. That was definitely the right thing to do and by Friday morning when I was released, I felt ready to go home.
Everything has continued to improve – I am getting up and around pretty well, my pain has been very well controlled (although I am beginning to run out of Percocet and it makes me nervous… I am rationing them out very carefully at this point!) and my friends and family have been taking great care of me.
Right now I’m sitting on my deck with an iPad, a book and a cup of coffee – hard to complain about that.
I am a bit, how should I phrase this, emotionally fragile at the moment, though, and have had a couple breakdowns over very minor things… hence the video above! I don’t know if it’s hormonal at this point or just a result of all the emotional and physical stress from the past couple of weeks, but I have been crying a bit more than usual! But probably still way less than Jenny does on a good day. So it’s all perspective, right?
Anyway, thank you all for the support, prayers and well wishes. It means a lot to me! And now I will knock off this mushy stuff before I start crying again.
I cried today when they were working on a traffic signal on my street that required me to sit still for several minutes longer than usual instead of BEING HOME ALREADY BECAUSE I HAD SO MUCH WORK TO DO!
So I’d say you’re as usual, still more emotionally stable than I am.
I notice you neither confirmed nor denied that you are still a woman.
A. Glad you’re adjusting to your new life as a dude. B. Glad they didn’t remove your writerness along with your uterus. And C. I really need to get cracking on that therapist for Jenny!!! Crying at a traffic light, indeed. Don’t most people swear?