The morning after my surgery, as you would expect, I felt awful. I still had an epidural in that was keeping the whole of many abdomen numb, even my feet felt a little tingly. If I touched my tummy it felt really weird. I could feel the skin under my fingers, but I couldn't feel my fingers on my tummy, it was like touching rubber! From my chest up however, I felt an awful lot of pain. The was a lot of air inside my body which had entered the abdomen cavity during surgery, and this site was riding up into my chest. Every breath I took hurt. I tried to ease the pain with my morphine top up, but each time I pressed it I felt drowsy and sick. Oh God how I hated being sick! Worst if all it didn't improve the pain in my chest. I stopped giving myself the extra morphine dose quite quickly.
Two nurses helped me to have a bed bath. This was also a very weird experience. They filled a bowel with warm water, helped me take off my gown, and assisted me whilst I washed my face, neck chest and tummy. I am not accustomed to people seeing me wash, and I'm rather body conscious. Who isn't? Still, it did feel refreshing.
After my wash, they wanted me to sit in a chair! I couldn't believe I was expected to stand up and move to a chair not twelve hours after open surgery. The two of them supported me whilst I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt very dizzy and faint, but they assured me I was fine and doing well. Trying to stand when the epidural was still so strong was very weird, but I did manage to stand and move across to a chair. By the time I sat down I was very out of breath and the pain in my chest had soared. I felt like I was about ninety. Then, my husband appeared around the corner. I was so pleased to see him, but admittedly, a little saddened that he should see me in such a state. I looked up and smiled at him. I simply said "No bag" as although I know we'd have coped of I'd have ended up with one, that is what he really needed to know at that point. He said that was great, and then he made some excuse about needing a bin for his rubbish or something and disappeared. Turns out he had to disappear off for a little cry, as he was so pleased to see me alive! Sometimes I forget that although this disease is physically happening to my body, it's really my family that suffer with it.
When the surgeon spoke to me a about a colectomy on my first night in hospital, I said to him "so will I be in hospital for weeks afterwards?" His reply was
"No not weeks. People are usually up and about in a few days"
Now when I heard this answer what I interpreted it as was, 'after this massive operation, you will be in hospital for a day or two, but after that you'll be back at work.'
What the surgeon meant was, 'after a few days people are usually able to stand up gingerly and slowly and carefully make it to the bathroom on there own.'
I was completely unprepared for just how much of a shock to the system this operation would be and the steady but slow recovery that would take far longer than the few nights I stayed in hospital. Very naively I compared the operation to the natural birth of my two daughters. I thought to myself that giving birth to a 7 lb baby was a massive thing for my body to do, and the removal of a section of colon was a similar thing the body would need to recover from. What I failed to factor in was that when giving birth naturally, my body slowly and gently relaxed the muscles of the abdomen to allow growing room for the baby, and a super stretchy cervix provided enough room for the baby to be born. In open surgery, all the muscles in the abdomen were split apart by man made tools, from the outside to the inside. There was massive loss and replacement of fluids, a large chunk of an important organ was cut out and removed, never to be replaced.
I spent the next few days in hospital, sleeping, reading, waiting for my bowels to open again, and trying desperately to eat something. Eating was the major thing that was going to aid my recovery, but it was simply the hardest thing to do because of the seemingly relentless nausea. This next hurdle, I shall talk about in my next post.
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