Monday, December 10, 2007

AN ENEMA!!!!!!!

I'm happy to report that the D&C went better than expected. The nausea was kept to a minimum (thanks either to the anti-nausea meds they gave me or thanks to the fact that I wasn't already feeling so crappy like I was before the retrieval), I'm not nearly in as much pain as I was expecting, and I'm not (TMI) bleeding nearly as much as I expected. I am still feeling the effects of the anesthesia and just a bit out of it, but it isn't too bad.

I had trouble sleeping last night (big surprise) and was pretty tired and nervous this morning. We got to the clinic at 6:30, sat in the waiting room for about 5 minutes, filled out some paperwork and then they prepped me for the procedure (started an IV, hooked up all the machines to monitor my vitals, etc.). We met the anesthesiologist who simply reiterated the information we had discussed yesterday. At 7:30 they wheeled me back to the operating room, raised the bed up and were helping me onto the table. I started to feel dizzy, commented on that fact, heard the anesthesiologist say "that's the medicine I gave you," and that was it. I vaguely remember some comment during the procedure about adjusting the level of anesthesia, but I can't be sure if that was a dream or not (and I forgot to ask about it afterwards).

I woke up in the recovery area and it was about 8:30. I remember thinking it was later than I expected because the procedure was only supposed to take 30 minutes, but maybe it just took that long to start coming out of the anesthesia. I was in the same area where I was to recover from the retrieval, so I knew where I was. The nurse came over pretty much right away and asked if I was feeling okay. I told her I was feeling some cramping so she added some pain meds to my IV and I fell back asleep.

I would open my eyes for about 5 seconds, look to the right of the bed to see if B was sitting in a chair waiting for me to wake up (wondered why he wasn't sitting there yet), and shut my eyes and succumb to the sedation again for another 10 minutes. This happened a couple of times. Around 9:00 the nurse came over again and I asked her where B was. She said she would go get him. He came in and said he was starting to get worried and was about to let himself into the recovery area to find me. I'm still not sure why they took so long to go get him because we didn't ask. Maybe the nurses were just busy? Then they sat me up in a chair for awhile, gave me some water and some fluids and just made sure I was doing okay.

This visit to the surgery center was definitely easier and more pleasant than my last 3 visits (retrieval and 2 visits after that to deal with the effects of my OHSS). But there weren't any funny stories resulting from this visit. About 3 days after my retrieval, they had me come back into the surgery center to get an IV with fluids because I was very dehydrated, nauseous, constipated and still in pain. After 2 bags of fluid, I still wasn't feeling better and the RE was getting a little concerned that there might be something else going on (i.e. appendicitis) that they couldn't diagnose. B was on the phone with Mom explaining to her that they wanted me to go down to the emergency room to get checked out just in case and that they might give me an enema to help with the constipation. B was on his cell phone and Mom was on her cell phone coming down from the mountains and it wasn't the best connection. To back up a bit here, B was sitting in the waiting room in the surgery center which is a tiny little room with about 8 or so chairs. So because of the bad connection, Mom was having trouble hearing and B had to keep repeating "an enema," "an enema," getting progressively louder until he was practically screaming "AN ENEMA!!!!!" throughout the building. Luckily Mom finally heard that because B's next comment (he told me later) was about to include some very bad curse words. Isn't it great how this journey brings people closer together?

I'm not sure if he was going to stop by anyway, but we did ask to talk to the RE after the procedure while I was in recovery. He came by and asked how I was doing and that was about it. I had to ask him if the procedure went well, how long it would take to get results back from pathology, etc. Strange that a doctor wouldn't think to tell you these things without you having to ask. I asked him if he found an alien in my uterus or anything like that hoping to get him to crack a smile or something. He did kind of joke back that "no, we didn't find any aliens, but the pathologists will tell us for sure." One of these days I'm going to drag enough conversation out of him that he begins to resemble a normal human being with normal emotions.

2 comments:

Meg said...

So glad to hear everything went well. I knew it would

Now the big thing to remember is not to go do too much, too soon when you think you feel 100%....I did that with my first D&C and really paid for it after a few days. Take care of yourself.....

Stay warm...more snow heading our way!

Makingpeace said...

Despite it's subject matter, your post made me LOL. That waiting room is ridiculously small and you feel like you're up in everyone's business already, add to it the shouting of enemas! I hope you can take it easy and continue to feel better as the anesthesia wears off.