I'm home, and alive and really happy that pharmaceuticals exist...:)
I am going to do the fill experience blog in a few parts because it's going to be such a long blog if I don't...
So...here we go!
Day 1: Surgery
My surgery time was at 7:30am, and I had to report to St. Peter's at 5:45am. First of all, I live an hour away from the hospital, and second of all, I am not a morning person. So getting up at 3:30 to take my "pre-surgery shower" and leaving the house by 4:30am, was not my favorite.
The emotions that were going through my head were those of both excitement and immense fear. I was really excited to get rid of the problems that I had been experiencing for the past 5 months ( or more in some situations), and fearful because well, it's brain surgery.
I have had surgery before, so I know what the whole experience is supposed to be like. You get there, you wait in the waiting room for a ridiculous amount of time, and then you finally get called back. Not at St. Peter's...I didn't even get to sit down in the waiting room before they told me that I could come back.. I was in a pre-op bay, and they were telling me to pee in a cup. My poor mother though, she didn't really even have a clue what was going on...
They had TVs in the pre-op rooms, which was pretty nice, since I had missed the morning news, and I was nervous anyway, and I needed something to distract me.
St. Peter's process was a little different than the other hospital that I had been to, but they had you register right in the pre-op bay, got your vital signs and went right to town...there were no delays in this hospital.
I don't hate needles, but needles seem to hate me. My veins don't like to be poked or proded at ALL. It took them two tries to get a vein, and about 15 minutes...that poor nurse...she probably examined every vein in my body before she tried the one that she finally got...it was right on top of an existing bruise from the iron infusions that I had been getting the week before..
The thing that ANYONE neglected to tell me, was that I had to get an arterial line. An arterial line is used to measure your pulse and blood pressure in a more accurate way, and when playing around with the brain, they want to be pretty damn accurate with those numbers. Well, as I said before, my veins/arteries are not cooperative, and their attempt at the first one was unsuccessful..even with ultrasound.The "forget what happened to you" drugs didn't work because my IV in my upper arm apparently wasn't working, and when they tried to put this in outside the OR, I could feel every second of it. When I woke up, I found evidence that they had tried FOUR times to get this line in, on both hands...
The finished product....
Three of the four attempts...
I went to sleep without incidence...and woke up without a headache. WITHOUT A HEADACHE.
W I T H O U T A H E A D A C H E!!! :) :) :) :) :)
This was the best feeling that I have ever had. Knowing that Dr. Lovely had done something so profound for me, in an instant....was incredible.
My lovely PACU nurses Heather and Kayla were AWESOME...and you will see that is a theme with the St. Peter's nurses.....
Off to the ICU!! Where I met my lovely nurse Laura!! She was SO awesome. She was so caring, and she took the time to listen to you, even when it wasn't about pain...she was so nice.
Here are some lovely pics, some are repeats, but here they are anyway:
Incision right after surgery
Beginning of lovely eye infection....
There will be more of my experience and more pics in Part 2, which will be tomorrow, but for now, I am going to go to bed. Good night everyone! Happy dreams! :)
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