Altoona, IA - Surgery

‘Despite the high cost of living, it’s proving to be quite popular.’

                                                        Anon

Although I love to put pictures into my blogs, the main story of this blog will have absolutely no pictures.

2 days ago I took center stage in my own personal medical drama in the operating room at West Lakes Surgical Center. There I was in the center of a sterile white 30’ x 30’ room lying on a table under some huge klieg lights with tubes and equipment circling me and 4 or 5 professionals garbed in green circling me as my eyes circled the lights and I was out. 2 hours later, I awoke, groggily, in a much smaller room surrounded by a brightly patterned curtain with Jim, the nurse, hovering over me (interestingly he is the same nurse who was hovering over me after my colonoscopy several years ago) checking my pulse and with Gary sitting to my side reading the news on his IPhone. I was groggy, I hurt a bit and I was in no shape to move. The only thing I could do was to lay there waiting for the anesthesia to wear off.

It started about 6 months ago (no one can accuse me of rushing into these things - though, in my favor, I wanted to wait until I was back in Iowa with my own doctor) when I was showering after a hike and looked down only to see a large lump between my eyes and my toes. Oh, yeah, a hernia. I’ve had one before, I know what they look like. This was a hernia. Now Gary has had two and I’ve had one so I know that, though they require surgery, I might be able to wait until we returned to Iowa where I could have my own doctor look at it and, when necessary, I could have Gary’s doctor as my surgeon.

At my annual physical 13 days ago (where I got blood work and a check of my vitals) I asked my doctor for a referral to Dr. Grossman, Gary’s hernia surgeon, they called and I had an appointment about 3 days later on Friday. Monday, I had a second appointment with my own doctor who did the pre-surgery blood work (must be within 10 days of the surgery and my original blood work was 16 days ago) and made a check of my vitals. (Dr. Grossman had told me that sometimes, if the original physical was so close to the surgery that the doctor might just sign off on it with out a full physical. I knew my doctor, she’d give me another complete physical. She’s pretty conscientious.) The following Friday (today) was my surgery. It all went pretty fast which was OK since we want to leave on our winter trip pretty soon.

We arrived at the surgery center, I got into my prep room right away and the nurse brought in the cute little hospital gown big enough for me and 50 of my new best friends. I changed and she then came into get the intravenous into me for the surgery. Oops. She tried my left hand, first in one direction then in another. No go. She looked at my clenched hand, my slitted eyes and said she’d better have another nurse try. Sure enough, JC came in, looked at my black and blue left hand, moved around the bed and slipped the needle into my right hand, taped it up and wheeled my onto my own little stage. I was almost late for my own surgery. And, that’s all I remember of that.

Now, back to the brightly patterned little room with Jim and Gary patiently waiting for me to wake up enough to get dressed and on my way home. Meanwhile my brother had called 3 times to inquire about how it was all going, two of our best friends also called and my sister-in-law, Cathy, called to tell us that she had some soup and some bread for us for dinner. You know, I knew what a great guy I got when I married Gary but I didn’t know what a great sister he was bringing with him. This is why it was my choice to have the surgery in Des Moines in friendly surroundings, rather than in California where we were when I discovered the hernia.

Saturday, Gary took the doctor’s advice and got me out walking early. Not as fast as I usually walk but I was out there on the pavement circling the campground as best as I could.

For the rest of the day, I sat on the couch or sat in my chair, where ever Gary was not working on the flooring. Hey, this hernia has at least one good result - I can’t possibly work on the floor, crouched over scraping the glue off with my putty knife. Much too hard.

Meanwhile I am strangely colored a deep purple and I look as if I jumped on a horse to go riding and landed on the pommel.

On Sunday I weighed myself when I got up and noted that I had gained 10 lbs. in the 36 hours since the surgery. My eyelids were swollen, my nose had turned red and was twice its normal size I knew I was retaining fluids but how can I be retaining fluids in my nose and eyelids? I think it might be TMI (too much information) if I described how swollen I looked in my groin area but, believe me when I say that I am not wearing jeans, I can only get my Adidas navy blue elastic waist pants on. I knew where those 10 lbs are.

And, here’s a question for the ages - why do my kidneys work so much better at night than in the evening?

They were working really well at 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm. Why couldn’t they have had the same efficiency at 7:00 pm or 8:00 pm or 9:00 pm? Monday morning I awoke 9 lbs lighter - you can tell how efficient they were over night.

So back to our question about why we two have had 2 hernias each. I can name only 2 cases of people I know who have had even one: my brother had one when he was very young and my nephew had one when he was 3. In this RV of 2, we have had 4 hernia surgeries. Now, how many RV’s can say that? And, how many RV’s would want to say that? We asked Dr. Grossman why we 2 have had 2 each and he told us that it was probably a combination of our activity and our genetics. We joked that we ought to sit more but that was not the conclusion he wanted us to arrive at.

On the other hand, I don’t want anyone to think that I am complaining. I am not. I have nothing to complain about. I had a hernia and had some surgery. Parts of me are a very interesting shade of purple, I am swollen in strange places and I’m getting used to my elastic athletic pants. But this all will pass. This is not a problem. Cancer is a problem. A heart attack is a problem. And, although I don’t want to minimize any surgery (any time you go into surgery and have anesthesia, there is a chance for a mistake.) this hernia surgery is not a serious problem. But don’t make me laugh or cough right now.

Meanwhile, we’re working on our floor and our house is a mess, I’m hurting a bit and here’s what out TV decided to do - half of it has gone white. We can see only 1/2 of the news and only get half of the weather.

We have 3 TV’s in our house - why is it that the only one we watch is the one that goes on the fritz? But this is a problem for another day - we’re juggling too many balls in the air right now to worry about the TV. Besides we can listen to all of it and still see half of it.