Surgery and Recovery Part 1

I will do an overview with as much information as possible, and then I'll go back and write about "feelings" and my thoughts on stuff. So, this post and I'm already assuming a part two, (since it will probably be quite long) will be details of the adventure. Make sense? Let us begin!

Monday February 28th
This day I was not allowed to eat. Boo. Instead, I was allowed only water, gatorade, jello, tea, things of that nature. Clear liquids. (Clear doesn't mean colorless, ps.) I was pretty hungry. I didn't really have much of a dinner Sunday night. I also had to drink magnesium citrate. This particularly bottle had a "lemony flavor". Ok, it tasted like poor quality lemon put into used cold bathwater. Yeah. Imagine drinking that. I'm sure there was even hair in it the way my hair is falling out these days.

Tuesday March 1st
More liquids and no food. I packed a bag with stuff to do and that I might need to have while spending a week in the hospital. I put in there my "Preach My Gospel" manual so I could study for my job this summer. I also added my laptop, and a bunch of nail files and clippers and stuff. One other part of this day...well, I'm sorry for the TMI, but I had to give myself an enema. Soooo incredibly awkward and unpleasant.

Wenesday March 2nd
Dressed in PJs, my dad and I drove down to the University of Washington Medical Center at FIVE A.M.!!! I had to be there at 6 to check in, so we left around 5. I hadn't woke up that early since work at EFY last summer. Check in was pretty easy. We waited not even 5 minutes before they called me back. (Same thing when I had my biopsy back in September). I went to the little prep room where they did just a few things, put in IVs, asked me questions, and told me more information about what was going to happen. They then gave me the epidural. I really wasn't sure what to expect with it. They had said some things that concerned me about the process beforehand, and some friends of mine that had one during pregnancy told me stuff as well. Well, it was nothing as I had expected. They had me lean forward onto a small able so they could get at my back. They rubbed that stuff on my back to numb the area and then they shoved the tube up by my spine. Apparently this could be really painful. I don't know, to me it just felt like someone was pushing on my back in a bad massage job. It's kind of weird because after this I was just sitting/laying on the bed in the prep room taking care of all that business, and then I have no memory. I have no recollection of them saying anything like "Ok, we're going to start the anesthesia" or anything. It's like all of the sudden, I was out. I don't even remember going down the hall to the room for surgery.

But, there I was anyway, unbeknownst to me, heading off to a room to get cut open and cut up. I think that was somewhere around 9 or 9:30am that I headed off to surgery.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will describe, as much as I was aware, my time spent in the hospital.