Well... I've got the scale moving in the right direction now. The official count is 28 pounds lost. I was doing great, but then I began experiencing some technical difficulties.
Last week, my big incision on my left side started to look like it was opening back up. It looks like a wide opened mouth (minus teeth) on my abdomen. I had hoped it was healed sufficiently from when the doc removed the stitches, but the incision is in a weird spot for how my body moves. Every time I sit down, every time I try to stand back up, every time I lie down/roll over (that sounds like doggie commands. For the record, I don't play dead), or lean forward, I feel that part of my abdomen pulling and stretching, and with it, the incision also pulls and stretches. Then I looked one day, and it was opened up, and there was goo running out of it. I called the doctor's office and left a message. Even though the recording said calls would be returned on the day they're received, I knew it was late in the day, so I didn't expect anything until the next day. I didn't call back because the voicemail told me not to, so I waited and got wrapped up in preparing for my weekend festivities. By the time I realized no one had called me back, it was Friday after hours. This thing was starting to look gross, and I didn't want to sit around all weekend with it like this, so I went to the ER. They agreed that it shouldn't look like this, so they checked me for infection (negative) and called the on call doctor with the bariatric center to see what they should do with it. I didn't know they don't re-stitch these things. I guess there's a concern with closing up some kind of brewing infection and things actually getting worse.
After talking to the on call doc, they showed me how to pack the incision with gauze soaked in a saline solution and how to bandage it up. I'm glad none of this actually hurts. I guess that's a good sign too, that it doesn't hurt. I've been doing this twice a day since Friday night, and it isn't looking any better to me. In fact, yesterday, it was bleeding. I'm waiting for the doctor's office to call me to schedule a follow up appointment. At least that's what the ER people told me was going to happen. If I don't hear anything today, I will follow up first thing tomorrow. I hope we're able to get to the bottom of this and get this thing healing up nicely. The last thing I want is to walk around with a hole in my gut forever. The ER folks said this kind of thing can happen. It can be, as I thought, from the way I'm moving aroud, if I've had any bad coughing attacks, if I've strained with a BM, and a few other potential causes were presented.
I've also gotten my first bout of "I tried to eat that food too fast" misery this past Saturday. I guess I wasn't paying attention and went a little too fast. I ended up barfing it all back up. Let me tell you... vomiting this way is sooooo weird. It's not like typical vomiting that tastes nasty and leaves that stomach acid feeling in your mouth. It tastes like nothing and feels kind of weird. It's just unpleasant enough to remind you to never again do what caused the vomiting. Today, I'm trying to take it easy and not move around so much. It's hard, though. I want to be active, and I want to be the rapid healer that I've always been in the past. I know, too, though, that if I keep it up the way I have been, this incision will never close.
After my Saturday evening vomiting, I woke up Sunday with this nasty pain in my upper right sided abdomen. I really thought maybe my gall bladder was starting to go bad. I took some tylenol, which helped. When I woke up this morning, the pain wasn't a constant, now it only hurts when I try to breathe deeply. I'm figuring maybe this means something different. I don't know. I'll have to ask the doc if it's still happening on my next visit.
In all, I am still happy with my progress. These difficulties I've had, I think, are the result of my trying to do too much too soon; I have, after all, just had major surgery. I have no business trying to do things I'd normally do yet. Today, I'm just trying to take it easy. Back to making Tony or Michael carry the laundry around for me and having someone else wash the dishes.
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