Sunday, November 2, 2008

A Little Post Op Blogging

Only a little. I've now got a fun case of vertigo going and typing is not the wonderful experience it usually is. Plus there seem to be two of every letter and it gets downright confusing.

Let's just say that morphine and vicodin are not my "happy drugs." No, no they are not. Most decidedly. My routine outpatient procedure went well... I think the right half of my thyroid was the size of a golf ball. It's funny but even with the pain from healing, I can tell a big difference in swallowing. It's an odd thing to realize that your healing, post op swollen neck is less swollen than before surgery in the first place. Weird.

Back to the drugs. Did you know that morphine lowers your blood pressure? Yeah. It does. I now have a history of "low pressure with anesthesia and morphine" issues to report in the case of future procedures. It's a darned good thing the savvy folks in recovery decided I wasn't ready to go home Wednesday night. It would have been ugly. The next morning started with a little more morphine because there was no way I could swallow the horse pills the nurse showed up with. Um... morphine is not my bag. I got through the morning with my eyes mostly shut. I can't say the vicodin was much better when I finally got to graduate to that. More loopiness, nausea and double vision. All I could think was, "you mean there are people who do this on purpose??? Yuck!" I was a happy camper when my beloved ibuprofen did a decidedly better job than the vicodin on Friday.

When I finally got up the nerve to look at my incision, it was really odd. I kind of feel like the dude in ... um... oh, crud. I lost more brain cells. What is that movie? I can see the movie in my head and the title just won't show up on screen. Augh. Christopher Lambert... Sean Connery... big mean dude with safety pins holding his head on... immortal beings... there can be only one. Come ON. Work with me, people. AH! The Highlander!!! That's it! Whew. (Have I mentioned that the happy drugs have not made me happy? They do appear to have made me stupid.) So... what was I saying... ah... oh, right. Neck incision. Safety pins. ::shudder:: Actually, the site looks to be about 4 inches long and has stitches and surgical tape all over. I joked with the kids that I should be Nearly Headless Nick for Halloween. I petered out, though, and ended up watching Children of Dune while Our Fearless Leader took the troops trick or treating.

That's it. I'm done. I'm cooked for now and need more rest. I'll save my adventures in post op housecleaning for another day.

1 comment:

FarmWife said...

I hope you're up & running soon!

My aunt had her thyroid removed about two months ago. She had cancer & they had to open her up from ear to ear down to the base of her neck so they could make sure they checked enough lymph nodes. She's still sore, but cancer free. One doozy of a scar though!