Surgery, Recovery, and Loss

Well, I'm back. Apparently I DID get my surgeon on a bad day. On every visit after that, she was kind, attentive, and promising me that my nervousness was normal but unneeded. She corrected a lot of confusion and differences in her procedure as opposed to the ones I'd been reading about. There was no need for special procedures beforehand aside from showering twice with store-bought antibacterial soap and abstaining from food.
At 5:30 AM on September 30th, I arrived and was booked in a hospital room. Blue and Silly were allowed to stay with me through redressing, IV insertion, and pre-prep admissions. The IV sucked - it was bad. The nurse was awesome, very gentle and sensitive. The problem was my hands. She couldn't get in on one, and had a hard time getting the needletube in on the other. Then she had to reach for the bandages and pulled on the vein on accident.
While all this was going on, we were listening to the elderly trio in the other section of the room spout bigotry and insanity. Here's a special tidbit - which I heard several times before going under - "My name is BONE-ita. Not BON-ita. It's AMERICAN and you keep saying it the MEXICAN way. I am an AMERICAN."

Needles are EVIL.

So, we spent some time waiting after that, and eventually had a different nurse come in and tell me it was time to pack up the phone and go off to the final destination - essentially a loading dock of people on beds waiting for one of the surgery suites to be open.  The surgeon stopped by one last time to see if I was doing alright, and to let me know that I would be out of the hospital the same day, so long as they were able to do the laparoscopic procedure. The staff of the hospital was amazing. Very polite, very concerned, and full of praise for my surgeon's skill. Once I was in the suite, I was positioned and masked in short order. After a moment of claustrophobia over what seemed to me a facehugger of a mask, I was out.
When I woke, I knew immediately that they'd been able to go through with the surgery, but couldn't tell if it was done with the laparoscope or a direct (and large) incision. All I knew was the area where my gallbladder had been now hurt horribly. There was a nurse immediately at my shoulder, asking where I hurt and explaining they were successful with the minimal-invasion lap procedure. A spike of morphine later, I was being told that they were bringing in Silly with my belongings and that I would be on my way home in about an hour.

8 AM - thumbs up but eyes closed, holding son's guardian gift.

Silly helped me to roll into a sitting position and dress; braced me while I wobbled onto my feet and transferred to the waiting chariot. Once home, oh what a blessing. We would have issues getting my painkillers for the next THREE days, during which I would mostly sleep. All of my short circuits of the house required someone watching or bracing me, and I was afraid to even taste solid food. Eventually, I went from only having six kinds of fruit juice, vegetable juice, and juice-tea blends to having a supplemental half of a thin sandwich each day. A month later, I am on a *mostly* normal eating schedule. I'm still careful about what I take in, and watch carefully for reactions to everything, but so far so good.
My incisions have gone from big (and in one case black with bruising) to trim and sealed. It looks as though I'll have minimal scarring - a pair just a little longer than my thumbnail, one at the top of my abdomen and the other in the top arch of my belly button. Two dots on my right side to show where the clipper-clamps went in, and that's it! The surgeon, when I went back, was quite pleased with the status of my incisions. I'm well on the way to being as well - if not better - than I was before.
The report came back, listing no cancer (I had no idea that was something to worry about..), an inflamed gallbladder, and THIRTY gallstones. I was given four pictures taken during the procedure, but I won't torture anyone with those. Let's just say I now need to remember to say "Yes" when asked if I have any metal in my body. lol

As for the loss.. well.. I lost ALL of my links, thanks to a virus that broke my Firefox. That would be why I haven't written before now. I lost my link to my own blog, along with all of the carefully gathered links of blogs I love to read, informative sites, and items on my wishlist. I've since found a few of my favorite blog writers, but I'm still hunting down links for recipes, gardening, farming, and chickens. If you have a favorite, please feel free to share. :)

A Somewhat Eventful Week

So. Proudfoot came by bus, stayed with me a couple days, went to the surgeon consult with me. Blue paid her train ticket so she could go see Houdini, take him a present from me, and explain (with a brochure from the surgeon, even) why I haven't been out to see him.
We discussed property plans, my trailer, a Bill Paying account, and sharing the cost of a car. Despite having had to hit the brakes on moving forward, I am ever eager to participate in whatever limited aspects I can manage.

I hate the surgeon, however. She went beyond having a bad bedside manner. I have new-found respect for the animals I eat. Nothing like being treated like a piece of meat to remind you of how your food is treated when it's alive. She essentially entered the room irritated. Demanded to know what "we" are doing about "all this weight". No questioning about my dietary habits, nor about what I am prone to gravitate to. After a brusque prod-and-jab on my abdomen, she declared the incision will have to be larger than usual. I said I was fine with that. I know my weight can cause problems with ANY surgery, let alone one that happens in the abdomen. I mentioned worries about the prominent, high riding bulge on the front of my belly, thinking this in particular would likely be why she was considering either a larger incision or an old-fashioned "direct" incision and surgery (rather than laparoscopic). Oh, she said flippantly, that's either a fatty deposit or a hernia. A hernia?! And that's all you're going to say? Are you expecting maybe you'll just go inside, poke around, and maybe/maybe not find out that cutting into that specific area was a bad idea?
Anyhow, as she gave me an extremely shortened version of the surgery, she said I'd be "in and out, same day". Wow. Every site I've seen says under the BEST circumstances, you should expect a stay of one to three days with the lap procedure. And that's with someone of average weight. Also, it will (not could, will) take Medi-Cal 6 to 8 weeks to allow the surgery. Then, I get the appointment for when I go in. Then I have - at the least - another 6 to 8 weeks recovery time before I am given the okay to do more than go for very careful walks. Oh, yes, and I was commanded to walk every day after the operation. Again, this flies in the face of everything I've found, that says you should not do much movement at all for the first few days, lest you pull loose a clamp or a clip. And she forgot to tell me that there may be a drainage tube left in when I wake up.
So, why am I so irked with her? Well.. She chose - again, without a single question about who I am or what I do - to believe that I'm a fatty-fat-fat that sits around eating cookies and drinking oil. I'm not kidding about the cookies. As we were gathering ourselves to leave, she harassed me with a verbal tirade about diet and exercise, including: "NO cookies, NO sweets, HIGH protein, LOW carbohydrate, NO SODA, lots of vegetables, and START EXERCISING!"
By the time we were downstairs, Proudfoot was spitting nails. She sees, now, a big part of why every doctor I go to aside from Mia says that I have high blood pressure.
I eat several small meals throughout the day. I'm not a big one for sweets - least of all cookies -  and I vastly prefer my very slightly sweetened, very weak tea to any soda. I eat lean meats (generally thin to paper sliced and on sandwiches), love veges and fruits, rarely have a reason for a carbohydrate beyond bread for a sandwich, and I much prefer whole foods to fast foods. The meals I post up photos on are special and not terribly often. When I am given a steak or any other large bit of meat, I eat a portion of it and put the rest away to graze on throughout the day.
When taken out, I am ALWAYS the last one still eating, and without fail am taking home a fairly hefty take-home bag. I eat slow. I take my time to enjoy my meal, talk, and drink. I tend to gravitate towards tea (iced or hot) with my meals, or lemonade if it's available. I drink quite a bit with all meals, and in between. Drinking with meals, I've found, slows me down and fills me up faster. If I have a sweet, it's something small and occasional. Yes, I am capable of the occasional snarf-down of chocolates when a craving hits, but those don't come often and if there's nothing readily available, the urge passes. After all, I don't drive - yet - and I couldn't make the walk to the nearest store. Call it laziness, but I'm more than willing to keep sweets/fatty snacks out of the house and make it a non-issue than I am to ask for a ride to the store to pick some up. On the rare case that I DO bring home a canister of Pringles or a pack of mini candy bars, I put them on the highest shelf in the farthest room. Again, call it laziness, but if I have to go hunt them down and climb on a chair to have a handful of chips, I'm just fine with letting the urge pass.
It doesn't help that I don't seem to be processing most foods and as a result, whatever calories I AM getting my body seems to be stockpiling in fat as a response to its sensation of being starved of nutrients.