I'm Alive

I am nine days post-surgery, and these have been the toughest nine days of my life.  Each day gets a little better, but nothing could have prepared me for the intensity of the pain.  Regardless, the moment I woke up from surgery I knew that I was 110% confident in my decision to take charge of my destiny.

I was relatively calm the morning of my surgery.  I woke up, curled my hair (didn’t use any product), and Jason and I were off to the hospital.  My mom couldn’t come with us because she had to stay home and watch Charlie.  He wasn’t feeling well and had to stay home from preschool.  A cameraman and producer from ABC news in Tampa met us at the hospital for a quick interview.  I really don’t remember much about the interview, but they were very kind and Jason was being funny.

Around 9:30am I was in my lovely hospital attire and my nurse, Stella, was inserting my IV.  My nerves were starting to get to me so she gave me something wonderful to calm them down.  Because Dr. Campbell was taking lymph nodes I had to be injected with a blue dye so she could find them.  A nurse came in and told me she had to inject four needles with the blue dye into each breast.  Yikes!  It didn’t hurt.  Each time the nurse injected the needle she would say, “Bee sting… ouch ouch ouch… all done.”  It helped!

By 11:00am, Dr. Campbell came in to say hello, she taped my angel worry stone to my arm band, said a prayer and wheeled me off to surgery.  The anesthesiologist came by to say a few words to me.  The last thing I remember was her telling me that she was injecting me with something.  I asked, “Will this put me to sleep?”  She told me no, but that was all that I remembered.

Two seconds later I woke up and saw Dr. Redmon looking over me.

“Hey, is that Dr. Redmon?” I asked.

“Yes it is,” a nurse said.

“I’m alive!” I said.

The next two hours consisted of me dozing in and out.  I may have introduced myself to the nurse, in case she didn’t know who I was.  Then they were rolling me off to my room.

I first saw Jason and my mom.  Behind them were my “Hags”, JoEllen, Cheri and Hayley.  They all came to my room with me.  I felt really good.  I wasn’t in much pain.  Life was good.  I may have said something about JoEllen taking me to England to see my friend Vikkie, and Jason was a doctor – McSteamy.  Either way, the first night was pretty good.  Jason even slept overnight with me since I was in a private room.

When I woke up the next morning I was very itchy.  My mom brought me a back scratcher.  I believe it was from the morphine.  Dr. Redmon came by to see me and told me that he was able to fill up my expanders to 350cc’s.  He said I am probably about halfway through my fills already depending on how big I want to go.

I had a few visitors throughout the day.  Mary came to see me at lunchtime and brought  me beautiful roses.  JoEllen and Cheri came to see me.  They made me a collage of pictures of all of us that said, “All I need is love, drugs and Hags”.  Debi visitied me and brought me yummy honey roasted sesame sticks.  Leona came to visit and brought me a granola bar and some other snack.  I felt very loved.

Dr. Campbell came by to talk to me about the surgery.  She said everything went well.  I had to breathe into my spirometer and she cheered me on.

Jason stayed with me again that night, and I was even able to get up and walk around in the hallway.

All in all, right after surgery I felt pretty darn good.

Saturday was a different story.  But I will blog more about that later…

"All I need is love, drugs and Hags"