The long-awaited surgery is finally behind me and I am on the mend. They ended up just taking out half of pancreas, because once they got in there, they discovered there wasn't enough tail left to do the funky double pancreas thing they planned. No big deal, I still have enough left to live a normal life once I'm all healed up, which may take a while.
A lovely shot Adam took the day after surgery. He got me a stuffed cat to keep me company since I had to be away from the real ones.
The first couple of days after surgery weren't too bad, because I was on so much morphine that I didn't feel a lot of pain. I made a lot of early progress and was cleared for "full liquids" (blended soup, pudding, ice cream, etc.) two days earlier than planned. However, a sudden onset of nausea and a drop in my white blood cell count set me back enough that I had to stay in the hospital until the morning of Day 6, as predicted by my well-read "surgery book" that they gave me before hand.
I felt pretty awful when I arrived home, but I have made small bits of progress every day since. I haven't made it through a night in bed, as I get really bad internal pain in the pancreas area when I lay too flat for too long. For some reason, I can sleep on the couch much better, so I usually end up there from 2 a.m. until Adam wakes up. Then I usually toddle into the kitchen for some food, and then go back to the couch and sit there upright while I have my breakfast. I don't spend a lot of time away from the couch yet.
Eating has been my other struggle since I've been home, since all but the tiniest portions make me feel sick and bloated after eating. I had this great plan to bring my own food and maintain a strict paleo/primal diet in the hospital, or at least avoid gluten no matter how bad things got. Unfortunately, there was even less in the way of refrigerator/microwave access for my caregivers than I had expected, and with the arrival of my nausea, those plans were thrown out the window.
When Friday rolled around, I knew I they wouldn't let me out if I didn't start eating, even though I felt really nauseous. The doctor finally just said to eat whatever looked good to me, which turned out to be some homemade Chex mix that my grandma had sent with my mom. So I pretty much lived on Chex mix and boiled or scrambled eggs from the cafeteria until I got out on Sunday. I know it sounds weird, but those were the only things that didn't make me sick. After that, my barriers were down, and I had no problem eating the homemade chicken noodle soup that my mom made when we got to my house (with saltine crackers even), and finishing off the Chex mix. I finally finished the soup off yesterday, and woke up today with a little bit more appetite for meat, so now it's time to raid the freezer and get back on the straight and narrow.
So now for the "scandalous" pictures. I know, this is even more risqué than the time that I posed in my sports bra and bibs. Yes, I am in my underwear, but it covers more than most bikinis, and I wanted to show my scars, as well as the weight I've lost.
I've secretly always wanted to get down to an even 50 kgs, to not only be "mountain goat waif-ish", but to make calculating my watts per kilograms easier. As of this morning, I'm more or less there, but I'm much more skinny-fat than I'd planned to be that weight, and my threshold power would definitely suck right now if I had one. (I'm guessing the inability to ride a bike equals a threshold power of zero.)
My belly is still pretty swollen, not to mention the lack of usable abdominal muscles. I'm going to have some serious postural issues to work out when this over. My back is killing me about as much as my incision is.
Thinking of getting a gansta tattoo to cover up the scar. What do you think?
3 comments:
Nice tat.... orrrr you could get one that incorporates the scar, like as a necessary portion of the tattoo, like the woman who used her pubic hair to look like a nest and had birds tattooed above it. If I had a to choose a role model, she'd be that lucky person.
nice celtic cross right on the tummy to cover it up. i think 2pac had one so it has to be gangsta right? or something crawling out of the scar would be a little more metal if you wanted to go that way.
Actually, the quintessential Tupac tattoo is "Thug Life" arched over the belly button, similar to what I MS Paint-ed onto myself (his had a better font of course). I couldn't think of a cool enough phrase though. Supposedly the scar won't actually be that noticeable in a few months, but we'll see.
I mostly put the picture there to make Emily laugh...
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