Day 1 - Day of Surgery

Wednesday: You could call this day 1. It started much earlier than any day should though.  I had had my last dinner the night before, a delicious gyro at a Greek cafe, I wasn't too nervous... But I didn't get the best night sleep ever. Maybe a little more nervous than I thought I was. My mom and i stayed at a hotel directly across the street from the hospital, so at 5:30am we walked over and I checked in.  Shortly after i was escorted up to my personal prep-room with a lovely gown all ready and waiting for me there.  A hospital chaplain stopped by and prayed for me...that was nice but definitely gave me the chills and things started to seem very real.  Next stop was a rather large room full of people all prepping for surgery. I'm talking rows and rows of beds of people... all awaiting some sort of surgery.  This is when you start meeting the nurses, your anesthesiologist and your surgeon also stops by to say hello and go over everything with you.  I was given some tight support stockings to wear to make sure I didn't form a blood clot and a rather stylish cap to cover my hair.  Next thing I knew, i was saying goodbye to my mom and being wheeled off to the operating room. They slipped an IV in my hand, pumped something into it...it felt like fire was rushing up my arm! ouch ...and that's the last thing I remember.....The surgery itself lasted 6 to 7 hours.. pretty long but at least I out for it. :) I vaguely remember the recovery room... But not really.  I wasn't really very conscious until i was in my own room and even then i wasnt very aware of my surroundings for a few hours.  I remember being very uncomfortable though.  I had an IV for medication on my right hand.. an IV in my left hand for who knows what reason, a clip on my left middle finger to keep track of my pulse... Both of legs were wrapped up in some special stocking that squeeze them to keep blood flowing and these were leashed to the end of the bed.  Then I also had a tube from my nose down to my stomach to drain the blood that made its way down there... and there sure was a lot of it.  That night was very rough... I woke up every single hour, very uncomfortable.  "Pain" isn't exactly the right word to describe how I felt..i think i told the nurse the pain was a 3 out of 10 after I'd had some morphine and who knows what else... but the discomfort was definitely  a 9 or 10. The swelling that takes place is just so incredibly major, there's no way you can sleep like nothing while dealing with it.  The tube down my throat and the tight rubber bands holding my jaw closed didnt really help things much. Breathing was difficult along with swallowing. Very horrible feeling.  Around 2am we also discovered that morphine wasn't the best drug for me and caused some icky nausea. Not cool.