No Sleep for the Wicked

On Thursday at 1:00 PM I was driving myself to a weekly appointment when I began to feel severe abdominal pains.   They were so bad that I considered calling mom and dad to pick me up, but I finished my appointment and drove myself home.   By the time I got in the basement I was convulsing with pain and dragged myself up to my bedroom.   We thought it might be gas pains, but they didn't let up over the afternoon and by 4:00 PM I was throwing up more than I had in my entire chemo cycle this year.   By 7:30 PM I asked my dad to drive me into the ER at Childrens Hospital and we stayed there all night.   

They did blood work and took X-Rays, but didn't see the cause of my pain.  Luckily, my surgeon was on call that night and came to see me and requested a CTScan which showed a bowel obstruction as well as a cyst or mass near my ovaries the size of a softball.   Dr. Weldon told us that there were no other options, but to do surgery to resolve the obstruction and that they wanted to start right away.   By 5:00 AM they were putting me under with a raspberry-lemonade scented mask.  

The surgery took about 4 hours.   Dr. Weldon removed the obstruction, which was scar tissue from previous surgeries, and was also able to remove the cyst which he later told us was more cancer.    I woke up in the ICU to Alex, Nick and Rachel all trying to talk over each other in my tiny room.   Excited to see them I sat up and didn't realize I had a breathing tube that I was ripping out.  

I was in the ICU for one day and then they moved me to a recovery room for surgical patients on 10 South.   I have an epidoral for pain, a ng tube to drain my stomach and several iv lines.   Nothing new here.  Same as my other surgeries.  However, my left arm and hand are numb and not functioning 100% yet.   This happens sometimes because of how my arms were positioned during surgery.   I expect to be recovering for a week before I can go home.   

My anesthesiologist, Nicole, came in to visit me today and brought me a gift.  She's so nice!   She got me pink, purple and mint green nail polishes, nail polish remover and lip gloss.  We were talking about these things yesterday and she brought them today.  I'm really excited to use these with Rachel when she visits tomorrow.