annathepiper | I'm home!

Short form: things went pretty well overall, arguably better than they did last year. Though I had my share of wooziness and pain (morphine will definitely hit you with the one while fighting off the other), I was a lot more coherent this time around than I remember from last year.

solarbird agrees and said that I sounded a lot better as she came to pick me up this morning. Also, I was able to walk down to the car under my own power. I think this can probably be attributed to better overall health in general, going in.

I have no more thyroid to speak of at this point. They're going to test what they took out to make sure it isn't cancerous, and on the off chance any of it is, they would then go to the step of nuking the rest of it with the radioactive iodine thing, similar I expect to what

technoshaman has recently gone through. I'll know more on this later.

The incision looks a lot like it did last year, only this time around with an extra line of stuff to hold it together; Dr. Stickney said a second round of work on an old incision sometimes makes it a little cranky, so the extra stitches are to make sure it holds together okay. And I've been given pretty much the same stuff I was given last year to clean it over the coming week: hydrogen peroxide, sterile water, swabs, and Polysporin.

I've got Keflex for an antibiotic, Percocet for pain, .05mg tablets of Synthroid, and Calcitriol for making sure my calcium doesn't crash out. I had Percocet this morning, but honestly don't have too much pain--my throat only hurts when I swallow. And I've been told that I can eat anything I like, though plenty of fluids and fiber is the recommendation.

It was overall pretty much a repeat of last year's experience. I went in sans contacts, so had to squint at everything they had me fill out yesterday morning. And Dara and I waited in the same waiting areas that I remembered. I read through some of Undead and Unwed, loaned me by Mimi, but had to bail on that once they took me back to get prepped for surgery and get all my stuff packed into a bag for later moving to my room. In the final waiting room Dara and I leaned on one another on one of the couches and mostly went zzzzzzzzzzz, though Dara poked through a couple of issues of Entertainment and was vexed to find that articles about BSG in them had been torn out. There were a couple cool pictures of Six, though, one of her by herself, one of her with Baltar, and one of her with Baltar and Starbuck.

The same guy who handled my anesthesia last year was on tap for this year, though I mostly remember him from writing checks out to him for his bills: Mark Petersen. Heh. The anesthesia seemed to kick in faster this time. As they got me all prepped on the table and hooked me up for stuff to get started, I remember less time for random chatting happening, and a lot harder cut to--

--the recovery room. Kind of fuzzy about that, but I was still pretty groggy at that point, and the only real thing I remember from then was when they got me onto the gurney and up to room 714. Two orderlies got me onto a blanket and slid me over onto the bed, and I liked that this year, I actually got the bed by the window. Go me!

My roommate was a small Asian woman to whom I was never properly introduced, but who'd had something done that required her jaw being mostly wired shut. She could talk, but only with difficulty. And every time she was asleep, she snored like nobody's business. This was the primary reason why I slept pretty randomly myself; she was louder than the incidental noise from the hallway. But I still caught some interesting noises during the course of the night: once or twice someone screaming (the latter time it was a man, too), once a woman bitching that she had called for a nurse over an hour ago and her mouth was very dry, incidental bits of phone conversations from the nurse's desk, stuff like that.

Gail was the RN on duty when I got settled in, and Tyler was her aide. He was the only male nurse's aide or nurse I saw the whole evening, and coincidentally also the friendliest of the lot, though the others weren't unfriendly either. They were the morning shift, so I wound up seeing them again when I checked out this morning, and Tyler was the one who gave me my prescription list and parting instructions. Gail was an older woman with blonde hair and dark roots and a sort of soccer-mom look about her; Tyler was tall and lanky and mostly bald, and soft-voiced. It was Tyler, too, who first advised me that the yellow stuff on my face, which I discovered by accident using a Kleenex to wipe my mouth off, was Betadine; they'd apparently really slathered the stuff on when they went in for the cutting.

Pearl was the next RN on duty, and damned if I can remember what her aide's name was. (Every time a shift change happened, they wrote their names on the whiteboards on the wall. But I totally lost track of who Pearl's aide was. I blame the morphine.) I want to say it was Gina, but I am not sure I'm not confusing her with Gail. Pearl was Asian of some flavor, but possibly some Caucasian in there as well; she was small and Asiatic in build and features and hair, but her skin tone was between Asian and Caucasian. Her aide was amiable and a bit on the plump side and had long dark hair. And it was during this shift that I was able to get up for the first time and make it to the bathroom. Go me! (Ahem. Er. As it were. ;) )

The night shift was Virginia and Aida. Virginia was yet another Asiatic-flavored woman, but older this time, and thin. Aida looked vaguely Mexican and had a bit of an accent.

Dara hung out with me for a while in the room, and once she was sure I was settled in properly headed on out to take care of other daily tasks. Mostly I dozed a lot, sometimes deeply enough to dream, though I kept waking up at random times. When I was coherent enough, I read. I wound up finishing off Undead and Unwed (more on this in another post) and started in on Visions in Death, which as of this writing I have not yet finished.

Yesterday evening they let me have clear liquids, so supper was beef broth, orange jello, and raspberry iced tea. I couldn't handle all of the tea, though, due to it being way too sweet. Remembering that morphine and artifically sweetened tea had been a bad combination for me before, I didn't want to risk drinking more than about a quarter of the glass. I wanted to have more--it was tasty and cold on my throat--but enh, not horfing up on my bed was a more desirable plan.

I asked for morphine a couple of times, but the doses were pretty small; 1mg a couple times, and never more than 2mg. Pretty manageable pain overall. People kept showing up to do blood draws on me, too; one notable young woman introduced herself as Genevieve from the lab, and she was thin and dark-haired and vaguely Goth-y with a bunch of large metal loopy earrings. I think she may also have had a nose stud, but I don't know if I'm making that part up. And they kept feeding me extra calcium, out of concern for making sure my calcium levels stayed up as my parathyroids were all going "WTF just happened here?!"

By this morning I'd started having random snippets of dreams about the doctor coming in to brief me, which was a little disconcerting until she finally did come in to brief me. But she was very reassuring with the whole 'it went fine and your calcium levels are stunningly good' thing. She asked me to come back and see her tomorrow to have my calcium levels checked again.

And I had breakfast, scrambled eggs and red jello and an orange sherbet milkshake. My roommate tried to get me to order her a shake, too, but although she'd been verbally told she could have shakes it wasn't in the nurse's computer yet, so the a la carte dining people wouldn't let me make that order for her. Ah well! She got it later, though, and on her way out with her husband, she wished me good luck, which was sweet of her.

And Dara showed up, and we did an experimental walk around the floor to see if I could move under my own power, and we got my stuff, and got my meds, and came home!

And now, I'm going to nap on this comfy couch with my comfy flannel and fleece blanket. It's good to be home.

spazzkat bought me flowers and a Spongebob Squarepants Get Well Soon balloon, and Dara made a jello thingie with a crushed-pretzel crust, which I will try later!

But now, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.