Anna's surgery and recovery adventures
Aug. 5th, 2004 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperThis being what I remember of the Great Partial Thyroidectomy of August 3rd, 2004. It's a bit after the fact, but this is the first opportunity I've had to sit down and start composing my thoughts fairly coherently.
Monday night, as I posted before,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mamishka and I went out to go see The Bourne Supremacy, as sort of a Last Fun Thing to Do Before Surgery Recovery thing, and it was indeed fun even if the movie had pretty much NOTHING to do with the book. Meems swiped a really apt phrase she'd heard used in regards to the I, Robot movie that's just come out: "suggested by" the book by Isaac Asimov. That's about the level of connection Supremacy has to the original Ludlum book.
That said, a lot of folks have said that they think this movie is worse than its predecessor--and Meems and I did not agree with this statement. I think Supremacy had a more cohesive plotline than Identity did, if you're willing to step away from any connection to the original books whatsoever. I really liked the woman who was in charge of the team hunting Bourne this time--she was well-played, and I liked her actress, who came across as both beautiful and severe, and fairly kick-ass. I was also greatly surprised by the choice of fate for the film version of Marie, and pleased that there was at least some continuity of Bourne being mentally screwed up still since his adventures in the first movie. That, at least, is a bit of an echo back to the original books.
I still don't think Matt Damon comes across as quite old enough for Bourne, though. Even now, two years later and looking more rugged, he still strikes me as a small boy who's scraped his knee or something, even when his character's supposed to be staggering around SHOT in the middle of winter in Russia.
Still, though, it was an enjoyable way to spend the pre-surgery evening, so yay!
Meems and I got home from the movie just after midnight, so I had to go to bed pretty much as soon as I got home. I took long enough to make sure my overnight bag was packed (change of clothes, some books, a few other necessitities), got the cat fed and medicated, and then crashed.
I'd been instructed to show up at the hospital at 7am in time for registration, so this meant thatsolarbird wanted to be pulling out of the house around 6:20. We did roll out of bed in time; I in fact woke up about five minutes before the alarm went off. And I had to force myself to remember to not put my contacts in, since I'd been instructed to not wear contacts to the hospital, either. That made for quite a bit of visual distraction, both on the way to the hospital and once we were there. All the street lights were these huge unfocused globes of color as we went past them, and once we got into the hospital and under the fluorescent lighting, it started giving me a bit of a headache and I had to frequently stop and rub my eyes.
There was a whole lot of sitting around and waiting involved with the earliest part of the day. I registered, then Dara and I sat. A lot. Some of the folks that showed up at the registration desk after we did actually got ushered off by nursing assistants after we did, which was vaguely annoying--but I tried not to let it annoy me much. I wound up trying to distract myself by reading more of Patricia Wright's fourth Ben Reese mystery, Out of the Ruins, though this was difficult to do with one eye. I kept having to cover my right eye, since that's my weaker one, and holding the book a few scant inches away from my face so my left eye could make out the words. And I amused myself a little just by closing my eyes and seeing what I could hear of the people around me--voices and accents and the like.
But finally a guy named Clay showed up to escort us back to a little cubicle where I was given another form to sign, and hospital wear to put on, and once we took care of that we waited some more. I had to leave my clothes in a garment bag, and leave both it and my overnight bag there as well. And I had my vitals taken for the first of several times--this was odd just because they had a machine that took my blood pressure automatically. He just wrapped the cuff around my arm, hit a button, and it tightened up and took the reading. The same machine--or perhaps it was a different machine on the same rack--involved putting a little clip on my finger. I think that took my pulse. Clay also asked me if I'd be going home after surgery, and when I said I would be staying overnight, he made a joke about staying at the "Swedish Hilton".
We didn't wait too long this time, though, before another guy--the one that Dara described as looking like Morpheus--showed up to take us to yet another waiting area, where Dara and I sat near a TV and watched bits and pieces of the very beginning of The Producers. That part was vaguely entertaining, just to see Gene Wilder in his role there, but the area in general had more visual distraction going on because one of the lights was defective and kept doing this strobe-light blinky thing that annoyed Dara and me both.
And then, yet another guy showed up, this time to separate Dara and me, send Dara off to yet another waiting area, and take me off to surgery. This was the first of three anesthesiologists who were all working together to prep me in the surgery area, and they were chatty and sociable. The one who took me back tried to hold my hand--thinking I needed the comfort, I think, until I explained that I couldn't see where I was going. Heh. But he got me in there and settled me down on the table, and asked me what I do--I told him I'm a software tester, and he asked if this meant that I played games all day. I told him I test boring software; he wanted to know if I tested anything he'd recognize. He did in fact recognize Windows Media Player.
All this time, he and the other guys with him (they all introduced themselves, I'm pretty sure I remember, but damned if I can remember what any of their names were--just that the main one talking to me had on dark blue surgical scrubs) were strapping me up to the table. It felt like I was being wrapped up in a velcro cocoon; they did my legs and my right arm, keeping the left one open for my IV. That felt a little alarming, but on the other hand, it did make sense that they'd have to secure me to the table. They stuck a breathing tube in my nose as well. And I remember the guy pointing out a woman coming in to do the last checks on the instruments, and telling her I'm a software tester.
And that was about the last thing I remembered before waking up in the recovery room, with a big collar of a bandage around my neck.
I was rolled up then into a room on the seventh floor of the hospital, and once up there, I was shifted onto a bed and settled in. Dara came in to see me and told me that the surgery had taken a little longer than expected, due to the size of the mass that Dr. Stickney had taken out--"she said it was like taking out a baseball," Dara relayed to me. And so she had had to be very careful and particular taking it out. To this, I can't really say that I mind--I mean, if a surgeon's going to be cutting my neck open, careful and particular is a good way to go.
But Dara had to go ahead and go to move stuff, so she left me all tucked in and snoozy. And that's how I stayed for most of the rest of the day--pretty snoozy. I had a succession of nurses, as the shifts came and went; these names I remembered, mostly because they kept writing them on whiteboards hanging on the wall: Michelle, Alisa, Nina, Gail. And they kept giving me morphine when I started feeling my throat too distinctly--though on the 1-10 scale, my pain never really got above what I would call a 4. That stood out distinctly in my head as a difference from when I'd broken my arm.
I don't clearly remember whether it was the anesthesiologists or the nurse who was on duty who got the IV into my left hand... but I remember it being futzed with several times by the nurses as they gave me morphine and antibiotics. And people kept taking blood samples, and taking my vitals periodically as well. I had food, but only liquid stuff: beef broth and lemonade for supper, and a lot of water. They took the tube out of my nose, which helped make me more comfortable, and they kept checking under my bandage to see how my neck was doing.
They have two kinds of rooms at Swedish, privates and doubles. I was told in my informational packet that if I had a preference I could request it, and they'd do their best to accommodate that. I probably would have slept better in a private room--but I didn't think to actually ask about it. So I wound up in a double, paired up with a lady who was apparently having some sort of nasty ulcer trouble and who had in fact come back into the hospital not long after a prior visit. She was on some sort of respirator; I kept hearing it make noise all night. And she snored, too.
I didn't get any visitors besides Dara, but I did get several phone calls:ysabel, eveshka, my little brother Marc, Dara, and flashfire. Not too terribly much talking happened on my part; I was pretty hoarse through most of the evening, and though my voice got stronger as the evening progressed, it was still fairly hard to talk.
And I read, when I was conscious enough to actually focus on the book--more of Out of the Ruins. I missed my laptop and my handheld, but it was for the best that I didn't have them--I had been instructed to leave all valuables at home anyway, and I don't think I could have focused well enough to have typed anything coherently on them if I'd had them. I was doing well to read.
I kept waking up a lot during the night, usually when my medications were wearing off, or when noises out in the hall woke me up. I kept hearing nurses on duty talking to one another and suchlike. Once I heard what sounded like someone giving a report over the phone about a woman who'd had a thyroidectomy, and I thought they were talking about me until they started talking about relations of this woman who clearly weren't mine.
By the time morning rolled around I was allowed to have soft and easily chewable food, so I went with scrambled eggs, strawberry yogurt, and a papaya smoothie that felt really good to drink, all cold and fruity on the inside of my throat. And Dr. Stickney came by to check on me--I didn't recognize her at first, probably due to being loopy on the pain meds. But when she started talking about taking the mass out of my neck, my brain clicked in and went, "Well, duh, who else would this be?"
She pretty much backed up what Dara had told me, describing how the mass removed from my neck had been just under the size of a baseball and with a lot of blood vessels and such going through it. And she took my collar off, which let me get a look at the incision the next time I got into the bathroom--this rather alarming red line across my throat, which does indeed make me look like the victim of a partial beheading.
Gail was the nurse on duty by then, and after Dr. Stickney left Gail told me all about what my discharge instructions were going to be, and that she'd be the one helping me get ready to go. She encouraged me to get the aforementioned breakfast, and once it was late enough in the morning I called Dara to let her know when my prescriptions were supposed to be ready and when she could come and get me.
I finished off the book... and eventually got up to get myself dressed, and was pleased that I pulled that off without too much trouble. While I was in there getting dressed, in fact, Dara showed up withspazzkat to see me home. So Gail gave both Dara and me the instructions on how to clean my incision and where to go to get the medications I was to have, and the rest of my discharge instructions as well; she summoned me a wheelchair, too, to see me off down to our car. And away we went.
I was glad to have the wheelchair... I had had the strength to make it to the bathroom and back, but I was still fairly loopy on the pain meds, so getting me down seven floors and out into the parking garage was probably pushing it a bit. But we made it down to the pharmacy, got the stuff, then got me out to the car. I was being pushed around by a young volunteer--I half-wondered if it was a bit of a push for her because I'm not light, and it felt like to me that pushing me in the wheelchair was a bit difficult sometimes. But either she or the older lady accompanying her who was giving her instructions on where to go through the hallways must have kept looking at Paul for guidance, presumably because he was the only man present--and Paul lamented after we got into the car and drove off, "Don't look at me, I'm just the moral support!"
We stopped at Murkworks South on the way home, as I posted before, and picked up a few things and briefly checked email. I also got Dara to call Drizzle, my backup ISP, to convert my account with them to dialup so that I could have at least some net access here at the new place until we get the DSL modem in. Then we came on up to Murkworks North.
It turned out that I had to have Dara call Drizzle back and get them to reset my password, but we did at least get the dialup net access to work. So I was able to answer a lot of LJ comments yesterday, and talk to a few folks online and spread the word that I was out of the hospital and okay. I got virtual flowers fromsksouth, which charmed me greatly; she's all the way down in Antarctica right now, so isn't exactly in a position to send me real flowers. ;) rmd, however, did send me real flowers!
kathrynt showed up and made me some nummy soup with a lot of barley and onions in it.
And I slept. A lot. So did Dara, for that matter--we both zonked out fairly early, while watching Red Dwarf.
My scar isn't quite so red today, though there's a lot of bruising around it. I can feel it pulling subtly if I turn my head in certain ways, so I have to be a bit careful about that. I have to be careful straightening my head up completely, too; my neck and shoulders in general are pretty stiff and sore, and I'm not allowed to lie flat at least for another day or two. It'll be a few more days till I can get the incision wet, too.
Meems came over and brought her TV, a teeny rented DVD player, and a bunch of DVDs and tapes. We hung out and watched the TV-miniseries version of The Bourne Identity, starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith, which was a lot truer to the original books and yet odd to watch at the same time, since Chamberlain seemed a little too old to be a proper Bourne. I kept thinking of the whole thing as Shogun Meets Charlie's Angels--because oh the late seventies of the production and the buildings and the clothes everybody was wearing. Especially the tortoiseshell glasses Chamberlain had on at several points. Still, though, it wasn't a bad rendition of the story at all.
After that, I needed another nap. So Meems took off again, and I zonked out while Dara went downstairs to wait for the DSL modem (which as of this writing still hasn't shown up).
I've been puttering around some and unpacking stuff in small degrees when I've had the energy to get up. The cat is still pretty confused and wandering around sniffing at stuff; I feel kind of like her, as I've found myself wandering around spacily at times, thinking of nothing much in particular.
Tonight and tomorrow, I expect there to be more of the same: sleeping, watching TV, maybe reading. And I'll see how much I can do about getting caught up on my email and the rest of the Writer's Weekend LJ posts I want to do.
Monday night, as I posted before,
mamishka and I went out to go see The Bourne Supremacy, as sort of a Last Fun Thing to Do Before Surgery Recovery thing, and it was indeed fun even if the movie had pretty much NOTHING to do with the book. Meems swiped a really apt phrase she'd heard used in regards to the I, Robot movie that's just come out: "suggested by" the book by Isaac Asimov. That's about the level of connection Supremacy has to the original Ludlum book. That said, a lot of folks have said that they think this movie is worse than its predecessor--and Meems and I did not agree with this statement. I think Supremacy had a more cohesive plotline than Identity did, if you're willing to step away from any connection to the original books whatsoever. I really liked the woman who was in charge of the team hunting Bourne this time--she was well-played, and I liked her actress, who came across as both beautiful and severe, and fairly kick-ass. I was also greatly surprised by the choice of fate for the film version of Marie, and pleased that there was at least some continuity of Bourne being mentally screwed up still since his adventures in the first movie. That, at least, is a bit of an echo back to the original books.
I still don't think Matt Damon comes across as quite old enough for Bourne, though. Even now, two years later and looking more rugged, he still strikes me as a small boy who's scraped his knee or something, even when his character's supposed to be staggering around SHOT in the middle of winter in Russia.
Still, though, it was an enjoyable way to spend the pre-surgery evening, so yay!
Meems and I got home from the movie just after midnight, so I had to go to bed pretty much as soon as I got home. I took long enough to make sure my overnight bag was packed (change of clothes, some books, a few other necessitities), got the cat fed and medicated, and then crashed.
I'd been instructed to show up at the hospital at 7am in time for registration, so this meant that
solarbird wanted to be pulling out of the house around 6:20. We did roll out of bed in time; I in fact woke up about five minutes before the alarm went off. And I had to force myself to remember to not put my contacts in, since I'd been instructed to not wear contacts to the hospital, either. That made for quite a bit of visual distraction, both on the way to the hospital and once we were there. All the street lights were these huge unfocused globes of color as we went past them, and once we got into the hospital and under the fluorescent lighting, it started giving me a bit of a headache and I had to frequently stop and rub my eyes.There was a whole lot of sitting around and waiting involved with the earliest part of the day. I registered, then Dara and I sat. A lot. Some of the folks that showed up at the registration desk after we did actually got ushered off by nursing assistants after we did, which was vaguely annoying--but I tried not to let it annoy me much. I wound up trying to distract myself by reading more of Patricia Wright's fourth Ben Reese mystery, Out of the Ruins, though this was difficult to do with one eye. I kept having to cover my right eye, since that's my weaker one, and holding the book a few scant inches away from my face so my left eye could make out the words. And I amused myself a little just by closing my eyes and seeing what I could hear of the people around me--voices and accents and the like.
But finally a guy named Clay showed up to escort us back to a little cubicle where I was given another form to sign, and hospital wear to put on, and once we took care of that we waited some more. I had to leave my clothes in a garment bag, and leave both it and my overnight bag there as well. And I had my vitals taken for the first of several times--this was odd just because they had a machine that took my blood pressure automatically. He just wrapped the cuff around my arm, hit a button, and it tightened up and took the reading. The same machine--or perhaps it was a different machine on the same rack--involved putting a little clip on my finger. I think that took my pulse. Clay also asked me if I'd be going home after surgery, and when I said I would be staying overnight, he made a joke about staying at the "Swedish Hilton".
We didn't wait too long this time, though, before another guy--the one that Dara described as looking like Morpheus--showed up to take us to yet another waiting area, where Dara and I sat near a TV and watched bits and pieces of the very beginning of The Producers. That part was vaguely entertaining, just to see Gene Wilder in his role there, but the area in general had more visual distraction going on because one of the lights was defective and kept doing this strobe-light blinky thing that annoyed Dara and me both.
And then, yet another guy showed up, this time to separate Dara and me, send Dara off to yet another waiting area, and take me off to surgery. This was the first of three anesthesiologists who were all working together to prep me in the surgery area, and they were chatty and sociable. The one who took me back tried to hold my hand--thinking I needed the comfort, I think, until I explained that I couldn't see where I was going. Heh. But he got me in there and settled me down on the table, and asked me what I do--I told him I'm a software tester, and he asked if this meant that I played games all day. I told him I test boring software; he wanted to know if I tested anything he'd recognize. He did in fact recognize Windows Media Player.
All this time, he and the other guys with him (they all introduced themselves, I'm pretty sure I remember, but damned if I can remember what any of their names were--just that the main one talking to me had on dark blue surgical scrubs) were strapping me up to the table. It felt like I was being wrapped up in a velcro cocoon; they did my legs and my right arm, keeping the left one open for my IV. That felt a little alarming, but on the other hand, it did make sense that they'd have to secure me to the table. They stuck a breathing tube in my nose as well. And I remember the guy pointing out a woman coming in to do the last checks on the instruments, and telling her I'm a software tester.
And that was about the last thing I remembered before waking up in the recovery room, with a big collar of a bandage around my neck.
I was rolled up then into a room on the seventh floor of the hospital, and once up there, I was shifted onto a bed and settled in. Dara came in to see me and told me that the surgery had taken a little longer than expected, due to the size of the mass that Dr. Stickney had taken out--"she said it was like taking out a baseball," Dara relayed to me. And so she had had to be very careful and particular taking it out. To this, I can't really say that I mind--I mean, if a surgeon's going to be cutting my neck open, careful and particular is a good way to go.
But Dara had to go ahead and go to move stuff, so she left me all tucked in and snoozy. And that's how I stayed for most of the rest of the day--pretty snoozy. I had a succession of nurses, as the shifts came and went; these names I remembered, mostly because they kept writing them on whiteboards hanging on the wall: Michelle, Alisa, Nina, Gail. And they kept giving me morphine when I started feeling my throat too distinctly--though on the 1-10 scale, my pain never really got above what I would call a 4. That stood out distinctly in my head as a difference from when I'd broken my arm.
I don't clearly remember whether it was the anesthesiologists or the nurse who was on duty who got the IV into my left hand... but I remember it being futzed with several times by the nurses as they gave me morphine and antibiotics. And people kept taking blood samples, and taking my vitals periodically as well. I had food, but only liquid stuff: beef broth and lemonade for supper, and a lot of water. They took the tube out of my nose, which helped make me more comfortable, and they kept checking under my bandage to see how my neck was doing.
They have two kinds of rooms at Swedish, privates and doubles. I was told in my informational packet that if I had a preference I could request it, and they'd do their best to accommodate that. I probably would have slept better in a private room--but I didn't think to actually ask about it. So I wound up in a double, paired up with a lady who was apparently having some sort of nasty ulcer trouble and who had in fact come back into the hospital not long after a prior visit. She was on some sort of respirator; I kept hearing it make noise all night. And she snored, too.
I didn't get any visitors besides Dara, but I did get several phone calls:
ysabel, eveshka, my little brother Marc, Dara, and flashfire. Not too terribly much talking happened on my part; I was pretty hoarse through most of the evening, and though my voice got stronger as the evening progressed, it was still fairly hard to talk.And I read, when I was conscious enough to actually focus on the book--more of Out of the Ruins. I missed my laptop and my handheld, but it was for the best that I didn't have them--I had been instructed to leave all valuables at home anyway, and I don't think I could have focused well enough to have typed anything coherently on them if I'd had them. I was doing well to read.
I kept waking up a lot during the night, usually when my medications were wearing off, or when noises out in the hall woke me up. I kept hearing nurses on duty talking to one another and suchlike. Once I heard what sounded like someone giving a report over the phone about a woman who'd had a thyroidectomy, and I thought they were talking about me until they started talking about relations of this woman who clearly weren't mine.
By the time morning rolled around I was allowed to have soft and easily chewable food, so I went with scrambled eggs, strawberry yogurt, and a papaya smoothie that felt really good to drink, all cold and fruity on the inside of my throat. And Dr. Stickney came by to check on me--I didn't recognize her at first, probably due to being loopy on the pain meds. But when she started talking about taking the mass out of my neck, my brain clicked in and went, "Well, duh, who else would this be?"
She pretty much backed up what Dara had told me, describing how the mass removed from my neck had been just under the size of a baseball and with a lot of blood vessels and such going through it. And she took my collar off, which let me get a look at the incision the next time I got into the bathroom--this rather alarming red line across my throat, which does indeed make me look like the victim of a partial beheading.
Gail was the nurse on duty by then, and after Dr. Stickney left Gail told me all about what my discharge instructions were going to be, and that she'd be the one helping me get ready to go. She encouraged me to get the aforementioned breakfast, and once it was late enough in the morning I called Dara to let her know when my prescriptions were supposed to be ready and when she could come and get me.
I finished off the book... and eventually got up to get myself dressed, and was pleased that I pulled that off without too much trouble. While I was in there getting dressed, in fact, Dara showed up with
spazzkat to see me home. So Gail gave both Dara and me the instructions on how to clean my incision and where to go to get the medications I was to have, and the rest of my discharge instructions as well; she summoned me a wheelchair, too, to see me off down to our car. And away we went.I was glad to have the wheelchair... I had had the strength to make it to the bathroom and back, but I was still fairly loopy on the pain meds, so getting me down seven floors and out into the parking garage was probably pushing it a bit. But we made it down to the pharmacy, got the stuff, then got me out to the car. I was being pushed around by a young volunteer--I half-wondered if it was a bit of a push for her because I'm not light, and it felt like to me that pushing me in the wheelchair was a bit difficult sometimes. But either she or the older lady accompanying her who was giving her instructions on where to go through the hallways must have kept looking at Paul for guidance, presumably because he was the only man present--and Paul lamented after we got into the car and drove off, "Don't look at me, I'm just the moral support!"
We stopped at Murkworks South on the way home, as I posted before, and picked up a few things and briefly checked email. I also got Dara to call Drizzle, my backup ISP, to convert my account with them to dialup so that I could have at least some net access here at the new place until we get the DSL modem in. Then we came on up to Murkworks North.
It turned out that I had to have Dara call Drizzle back and get them to reset my password, but we did at least get the dialup net access to work. So I was able to answer a lot of LJ comments yesterday, and talk to a few folks online and spread the word that I was out of the hospital and okay. I got virtual flowers from
sksouth, which charmed me greatly; she's all the way down in Antarctica right now, so isn't exactly in a position to send me real flowers. ;) rmd, however, did send me real flowers!kathrynt showed up and made me some nummy soup with a lot of barley and onions in it.And I slept. A lot. So did Dara, for that matter--we both zonked out fairly early, while watching Red Dwarf.
My scar isn't quite so red today, though there's a lot of bruising around it. I can feel it pulling subtly if I turn my head in certain ways, so I have to be a bit careful about that. I have to be careful straightening my head up completely, too; my neck and shoulders in general are pretty stiff and sore, and I'm not allowed to lie flat at least for another day or two. It'll be a few more days till I can get the incision wet, too.
Meems came over and brought her TV, a teeny rented DVD player, and a bunch of DVDs and tapes. We hung out and watched the TV-miniseries version of The Bourne Identity, starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith, which was a lot truer to the original books and yet odd to watch at the same time, since Chamberlain seemed a little too old to be a proper Bourne. I kept thinking of the whole thing as Shogun Meets Charlie's Angels--because oh the late seventies of the production and the buildings and the clothes everybody was wearing. Especially the tortoiseshell glasses Chamberlain had on at several points. Still, though, it wasn't a bad rendition of the story at all.
After that, I needed another nap. So Meems took off again, and I zonked out while Dara went downstairs to wait for the DSL modem (which as of this writing still hasn't shown up).
I've been puttering around some and unpacking stuff in small degrees when I've had the energy to get up. The cat is still pretty confused and wandering around sniffing at stuff; I feel kind of like her, as I've found myself wandering around spacily at times, thinking of nothing much in particular.
Tonight and tomorrow, I expect there to be more of the same: sleeping, watching TV, maybe reading. And I'll see how much I can do about getting caught up on my email and the rest of the Writer's Weekend LJ posts I want to do.