My gallbladder surgery was yesterday. I've been in and out of consciousness since then. I thought I would be totally fine the day after, but I'm feeling... not great. It's not PAIN pain, like my gallbladder attack was. It's more like extreme discomfort and no position quite alleviates it.

When they go into your belly to remove an organ, they more or less inflate you full of air. Rather than having one long incision full of stitches, I have three small-ish holes with pretty bad bruising around them, and they're sealed with something closer to glue than stitches. I've been told not to peel it off. It will eventually fall off itself, and until then I have to be careful when bathing or showering or my wounds could reopen.

So, basically, it's not excruciating pain centered around the wound, but it IS pain and discomfort related to the air. Standing hurts, as I immediately feel bloated either in my belly (think bellybutton area) or just beneath my breasts and it throbs. Right after waking I had a really serious case of the hiccups and each hiccup really hurt my chest/ribs. And I keep sporadically getting those hiccups or feeling a need to cough or sniffle, but doing those things hurts. This air bubble feeling keeps moving around, too, and the pain is often centered in my shoulder. One of the only ways to get comfortable is to lay down, but I can't do stuff that way. :/

The day of surgery, the worst thing was actually my throat! They had to stick a tube down my throat, and it was there for over an hour. Have you ever eaten popcorn and gotten a kernel wedged in your throat that you couldn't seem to unlodge? It's like that, but worse. It really hurt to swallow or to eat and I kept choking when I tried to talk. But I had some medicinal cough drops and some jello, and while my throat is still a bit sore, that blockage is gone.

Besides the air bubble thing, my lower abdomen IS sore when I try to stretch, bend over, or twist in any way. But that's why I was written off of work. At first my doctor had only planned to sign me off for seven to ten days because I said I was a cashier and the job wasn't all that strenuous. Then my mom ratted me out and told him my job didn't give me a break longer than fifteen minutes, that I can't often sit, that I sometimes have to run around, and that I bend over. So I got lectured about being dishonest and my note says I'm off until the 24th. That's almost three weeks. I plan to make the best of the long absence and get a LOT of art and writing done.

When I went to sleep, I had to lock my dog out of my room. Normally she sleeps in my bed or in her doggie bed on the floor, but she always wants to sleep on my stomach! That would have been too much for me right now, so she'll probably have to sleep in my mom's room for at least a week.

Anyway, here's a vague description of what surgery is like for those curious! Feel free to skip if you aren't interested in those details.

I had to get to the hospital at around noon even though my surgery wasn't until 2:30. They made me provide a urine sample, which I was pissed off about. I have trouble peeing as it is (one of my many medical issues/mysteries) and they hadn't let me eat or drink anything in about twelve hours. But after about twenty minutes of forcing I was able to produce enough for the sample. And after that I had to strip totally naked to get into the gown. Being naked makes me want to literally die, and apparently this is a somewhat common complaint, as the nurse brought me this weird mesh underwear. It was better than being totally naked, but the gown was uncomfortable because it's made to easily open and close and has hard cardboard-y bits where they can open it up to place the sticky patches.

I had to lie in the hospital bed, and sign some forms, and answer the same questions about thirty times. They gave me a cup full of liquid Tylenol that reminded me of why I used to dump my medicine down the sink and lie to my mom about having taken it. Shit's nasty (lmao). I got hooked up to a blood pressure monitor. Then the IV. I hate needles, but the needle honestly isn't as bad as the band they tie around your arm while they try to find the vein. After that were these weird cast-like things for my legs that pulsed and squeezed at random intervals. Apparently it's to prevent blood clots. And then my hair got put in a weird net. Every time a nurse came in they added something else to me, and when I told the last two that they laughed. I joked that when my surgeon came in he would put a clown nose on me. One nurse kept me company for a while and talked to my mom and I, and I was able to watch TV and had my own remote. It's pretty smart— the volume comes FROM the remote so you can turn it up loud without bothering other patients.

My surgeon came in to explain stuff and to promise my mom he'd take good care of me. He had one of those southern accents that made him sound like a rich guy who owned a big farm or something, and he made a joke or two. "The last thing you want to be to a grey-haired surgeon is interesting," he joked while explaining that it's best to hope a surgery is so routine that it's forgettable. After that, the last two nurses came to get me. Whatever anesthetic they gave me wiped out a pretty significant chunk of my memory. I can't remember the bed getting wheeled out, or getting hooked up to the machines or anything. That whole half hour of prep is gone.

The next thing I remember, a nurse was in mid-sentence and I was by myself, looking around to figure out where I was. I had to slowly work my way up to getting out of my stretcher and sitting in this big squishy chair, and then my mom came back. She had spent most of the time wandering around the hospital because she'd gotten lost, just like me the last time she'd been in the hospital. Once I felt up to it, I got dressed, and then I got wheeled back to my car. I took a Percocet and went to bed after having some crackers, as you're not supposed to take it on an empty stomach.

I'm still achey and uncomfortable, but I'm just glad things went as planned and there weren't any complications. Hopefully I'll get some very needed rest during my time off of work!