With a Side of Hope

Good Morning!  Wow, has it honestly been a week since I last posted on here?  That is the absolute longest I have gone without posting.  I have felt really bad about it but I haven’t exactly been feeling my best.  I have had a very rough weekend and rough couple of days for sure.  I’ve been in a ton of pain and have been trying to recover smoothly.  You might be wondering what I am talking about especially if you don’t follow me on Twitter or if you are not friends with me on my personal Facebook page.  I will explain everything.  First, I will go back to last Thursday and pick up where I left off from.  I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday!

On Thursday, it was my last day of work for the holiday break.  Mike and I decided to stay in for dinner.  We cooked up a Newman’s pizza and roasted some veggies with some Alexia sweet potato fries.

Newman's Pizza

Mike added pepperoni to his side

My dinner plate

The pizza was actually pretty good.  I liked it and I would definitely get it again if it’s on sale and I had a coupon.  After dinner, we went to pick up a movie from Redbox.  We ended up renting Crazy Stupid Love.  I actually really enjoyed the movie!  I’m glad that we finally ended up watching it because it was good.  Plus, Ryan Gosling isn’t bad to look at, is he?  Haha.

On Friday, I picked up Melissa and I and we went out shopping!  Yes, we tried to brave the crowds and go to some stores to see if we could find any good deals.  We decided to stop at Wegman’s for lunch.

My lunch

The lunch at Wegman’s was great!  I think it tasted just as good as the food from Whole Foods if not better.  We had a really great time shopping and hanging out together on Friday.  I’m glad that Melissa had off so that we could hang out together.  After hanging out for a while, Mike asked if I wanted to go out to dinner at the Olive Garden.  So we ventured there for dinner.

Olive Garden

Spaghetti and Meatballs

The service was absolutely terrible!  The food was pretty good but the service ruined everything.  Little did I know that this meal was going to be the last meal and the last evening that I actually felt okay.

We got back home after dinner and I started getting stomach pains.  I didn’t really think much of it because my stomach bothers me all the time.  So I just went to sleep.  I woke up the next day on Saturday and my stomach was still hurting me the entire day.  I spent the majority of the day laying on the sofa and laying in our bed.  I felt so sick.  I finally decided to take immodium and call it an afternoon.  I slept for two hours and started feeling better.

Mike and I went over to his family’s house for dinner.  My stomach was still feeling pretty okay the rest of the night.  We got ready to leave and I started feeling some stomach discomfort again.  Mike and I sat on the sofa to watch tv when all of sudden I got an excruciating pain in right abdomen.  It was the sharpest pain I have ever felt in my whole entire life.  I couldn’t even stand up.  At that point, Mike wanted to take me to the hospital but I refused.  I thought I could sleep it off and that it was just something that I ate.

We woke up on Sunday which was Christmas and I was crying in pain.  I couldn’t move to get out of our bed because the pain was so sharp.  Leaning over the sink to brush my teeth was torture.  Mike said that’s it, I’m taking you to the hospital.  Luckily, the hospital wasn’t crowded at all because it was Christmas.  They took me right back and started testing and hooking me up to IV’s.

I had to drink 32 oz. of this disgusting contrast so that they could see inside of my stomach with a Catscan.  We waited and waited for results.  As soon as the doctor walked in, I could tell by his facial expressions that it was not going to be good news.  They said that I had the beginning stages of appendicitis and if i I waited any longer for it to be operated on it could burst.  I immediately started crying hysterically because I had never had surgery before and I had never been put under anthesesia before. I have never been so scared in my life laying there in the hospital bed.

Melissa and my mom ran to the hospital as soon as they heard the news.  They were planning on operating on me around 8pm because the surgeon had myself and another patient to operate on.  Before I knew it, he came back into the room and said he shifted things around and he was going to be operating on me first in about 30 minutes.  Now I really started freaking out.  I was so scared about being put under and I was afraid that I wouldn’t wake up.  It was terrible.

With tears streaming down my face, I was brought into the holding room before surgery.  I looked up and saw Melissa, Mike and my mom standing there and trying to calm me down.  In that moment, I knew  was acting crazy but I kept saying to myself that if this is the last time I see them, I want to take in every single moment.  I want to tell them how much I love them and appreciate them.  I was just happy that they were there by my side.  They must have given me anesthesia while my family was standing there because I don’t remember anything.

The only thing I remember is waking up and seeing a nurse standing over me and I said to her, well aren’t I going back for surgery?  She said, the already did the surgery!  I took the biggest breath of my life and felt relieved.  I was so happy that it was over with.  They brought me up to a room where my family was ready to see me.  At this point Mike’s parents also showed up to support me.

I felt very loopy and sore.  The nurses took care of me and were nice once my family was there.  I ended up having a roommate which I was upset about.  I was hoping to get my own room.  I was really sad when everyone left.  Mike was the last to leave.  Then I was there by myself.  I thought maybe I’d be able to get some sleep.  That was not the case at all!  The nurses were SO mean to me.  I was crying in pain and they took forever to bring me medication.  I was sweating because they had the heat so high for the woman in the bed next to me.  They refused to lower the heat and stuck a fan blowing in my face the rest of the night.

The nurses were having a great time with the woman next to me.  The woman refused to turn her tv off after I asked numerous times.  Then she snored the entire night.  The nurses would come in and turn on all the lights on her side and start laughing and talking really loud.  Then they bathed her around 4am.  I didn’t sleep the whole night.  It was awful.  I felt even worse because the lack of sleep and care that I was given.

The surgeon came in to visit me and told me that in addition to the appendicitis, a cyst on my ovary had burst and they had to scrape tissue off of my colon.  I am a mess.  I was in so much pain and they released me from the hospital on Monday around 11am.  Mike came to get me and we went to get my pain medicine.  When I got home, I felt so awful.  I took the pain medicine which in turn caused me throw up twice Monday night.  I wanted to die because of how bad I felt.  I eventually got to sleep Monday night.

I woke up on Tuesday and I still felt awful.  I was just in so much pain but I refused to take the pain medication that made me feel sick.  So I stuck with advil and aleve which did absolutely nothing.  Mike’s mom came to visit me for a little while and then Melissa and my mom came and hung out at the house taking care of me and keeping me company.  I feel so bad that my family keeps doing so much for me.  I hate being helpless.  I am usually the one who likes to take care of everyone.  It has me in a position that I hate being in.  I like being up and doing things.  It’s awful.

My dinner on Tuesday night was a plate of random foods that I thought would be gentle on my stomach and that I could keep down.

My random dinner

I miss cooking!  I haven’t cooked anything because it’s really hard to bend down or pretty much do anything.  I feel hopeless.  On Wednesday when I woke up, I had extreme pain all around my incisions.  I have 3 incisions because they did the surgery laproscopically.  I was crying the entire morning.  I didn’t know what to do.  Melissa called my surgeon and then I spoke to him and he told us to run over to the emergency room.  He said the pain that I was experiencing was not normal to the surgery that I had.

Melissa and my mom picked me up and we went to the emergency room.  It was PACKED!  I was sitting there in the emergency room in so much pain, crying and moaning.  It was awful.  They couldn’t do anything because of how packed it was there.  We sat there for 4 hours before they took me back to just take blood and give me pain medication.  They couldn’t even put me in a bed yet.   The girl who took my blood ended up collapsing my vein!  So now my arm was in pain.  I couldn’t win.

5 or 6 hours in of waiting, they finally called me back.  As they called me back, we saw Mike’s mom around the corner.  So Mike’s mom, Melissa, and I went back and they put me in a bed around the nurses station because they had no rooms available.  It was awful.  They hooked me up to IV’s and drew more blood.  I was also complaining about it feeling like an elephant was sitting on my chest .  So they took me back for a chest Xray.  They thought I might have had a blood clot in my lungs.  So then I had to wait to go for a Catscan.  They injected me with dye so that they could see my insides.  Then we went back and waited some more.

Mike showed up once he got done work and then his mom left.  I was there with Melissa, my mom and Mike.  Melissa and my mom waited for a while and then went home once they discovered that I didn’t have a blood clot.  They said that they thought the pain was normal surgical pain and that I follow-up with my surgeon.  They also prescribed me with different pain medicine that seems to help than the original pain medicine.

I finally got home at 10pm after being at the hospital since 12pm.  I felt so bad that I ruined the entire day for Melissa and my mom.  I promise that I am going to make it up to them.  Now, here I am today.  I feel like such a slob.  I haven’t worn makeup, my contacts, or normal clothing since Saturday.  That is so not like me.  I am still in a lot of pain and I feel really sore.  I’m going to head over to CVS with Melissa and my mom this afternoon to get my pain medication.  I’m hoping that I can go to a store or do something outside for a little bit.  It’s hard for me to sit and lay down though cause of the pain.  I have an appointment to see the surgeon tomorrow.  I’m hoping that I feel better soon.  What a way to bring in the new year!

So that has been my life this past weekend and week.  I hope yours has been much better than mine!!  Have you ever had surgery before?  How long did it take for you to feel better?

Have a great Thursday and I will try to check in again soon!  Thanks for being patient with me during this time.  I appreciate it.

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