For the first day after surgery I was on oxygen because my
levels kept dropping. They have a clip on your finger that measures your oxygen
level and mine kept dropping whenever I would move causing the machine to let
out a loud continuous beeping sound. Although I wasn’t concerned because I
never felt faint or out of breath, Ally nearly had a heart attack each time it
happened so I just tried to stay as still as possible.
That first day after surgery they had to redo our IV’s because
they had punctured the veins. Mine they got on the second try and Ally’s they
had to do about four before they got it and by now her arms are so bruised she
looks like a junky.
The Surgeon comes to see us and I am not happy with what
they say. Ally had a hernia when she went in that we already knew about and
discussed with our patient coordinator and noted in the paperwork along the way.
She told them that she didn’t want it fixed because she didn’t have the money
and in an email they told us no problem they would just leave it. This was
obviously not discussed with the doctors themselves because when they came in after
surgery to talk to us they told us that they had fixed it and we could settle
with the patient liaison before we left. She acted like she had done Ally some
huge favor by finding and fixing the hernia, then after we pointed out that we
knew about it and hadn’t wanted it fixed she changed it to “it had to be fixed
to do the surgery.” Ally and I just let the subject drop for right then and we
would discuss it when we were alone later.
When they got to talking about me I was very worried with
what they told me. They said that when they went in my liver was too big and
they had to do a mini-gastric bypass instead of the original gastric bypass
that I wanted. At the time they told me this I had no idea what a mini gastric
bypass was and they just said that it’s the same thing just with less of the
intestines bypassed. I was confused but at the time there was nothing I could do
from my hospital bed. If there was the possibility of this happening I should
have been told, after the hundreds of surgery’s they have done I can't have
been the first one with this problem. Had I know that this could happen I would
have asked them to do a sleeve should this situation arise.
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| Example of our Drain |
A leak test is performed when you are finished with your
surgery and still under anesthetic. How they managed to get mine in me is still
a mystery to me as when I woke up Ally pointed out that there was blue stains
on the side of my face and neck. The idea of the dye is that when you drink it
if you have a leak it will leak into you abdominal cavity and then out into the
drain they put in you. If there is blue in the bulb of the drain with the other
fluid then you have a leak. When you wake up in your hospital room the first
day they have you drink more blue dye to test it again. Ally still swears to
this day that she saw blue dye in her drain, but when she pointed it out to the
nurses they just shook it and said that no everything was normal.
After you are awake and mobile they perform anther leak
test, this one involving contrast and a large piece of machinery. We were less
than impressed when they did this test as they didn’t have us stand there long
enough to have the contrast go all the way past the pouch. I stood in the arm
of the machine less than one minute and that is counting the time that I was swallowing
the nasty tasting liquid.
The next morning a nurse came in and told us to take a shower, when we asked if there was a shower chair she said that no there wasn’t one. For not only a hospital with surgery patients, but one that has overweight patients not to have a shower chair was unbelievable. When I tried to stand I had a huge knot on the right side of my back and hip, because of this I was unable to walk for more than a few steps and standing for long enough to take a shower was impossible. At this point I was wonder what they actually did to me when I was out that I am now unable to use my left arm because of pain in my shoulder and unable to walk because of pain in my back. Ally had a quick shower first and after managing to push a chair into the bathroom I managed to give myself a version of a sponge bath.
When my IV slipped for the second time I decided to just have them take it out and not put it back in. I was not in any pain from the surgery sites just from my arm and back and the pain medication was not helping with that. Ally had the same idea when hers slipped, and they began giving us our medications orally. We had been having some weird reactions, muscle twitches and hallucinations which we later attributed to the pain medication. I asked them to stop giving me the pain medications and actually had to insist on stopping when they were hesitant and told me that I wasn’t in pain because I was on the meds.
There were a few things missing in our room including a
remote for the television and a call button for the nurses. Another patient
that had surgery the same day as we did gave us her call button as she had her
husband there for help and wasn’t having any problems. Unfortunately when you
pressed the button it would call out the room number (loudly) at the nurse’s
station, which led to a few mix ups until they all remembered that we had the
button now.
Up next will be how things started to go wrong for Ally
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