A Story About a Sore Butt

Day 5 in the hospital has been a tough one. Yesterday everyone was optimistic that I would be going home today. So, in preparation I took my nausea patch off due to the fact that it was making my vision blurry. The doctor wanted to make sure that went away before I went home. Then they put me on Lortab for pain control as a test to see if it would work for me once I got home. They kept me attached to the pain pump, but I wouldn't use it to make sure I was prepared for home.

At 9pm on Friday I took the Lortab and went to sleep. The pain wasn't touched. It got worse over the night as I promised myself to not use the pain pump. At 3am on Saturday, my nurse gave me 2 Lortab to try and curb the pain. It didn't work. At 5am I succumbed to using the pain pump. A few pumps of the pain pump and my nausea returns hard-core.

I beg for nausea meds and the nurse gave me some zofran at around 7am. Nothing. I ate nothing for breakfast besides forcing down a saltine cracker in order to get down a Percocet for pain. One step up on the pain meds.

I was miserable all morning, sweating and unable to move or open my eyes without feeling like I was going to vomit. Before lunch time my doc spoke with me and told me that he would like me to stay one more night so that we could get the mixture of pain meds and nausea meds just right while I had help available at my finger tips.

Around lunch time my nurse gave me Phenergen (sp?) for the nausea and it knocked me out all afternoon until dinner. I woke up at dinner and ate a few bites of food, took a walk around this wing of the hospital, and now I'm back in bed, taking more pain meds, ready to sleep the night away hopefully.

I don't remember if I mentioned it or not, but we got the pathology report back on the rest of the tumor they removed. The doc said it was much of the same, severe dysplasia, pre-cancerous, and that by having this surgery I was able to get clear margins, hoping that whatever the abnormal cell growth was will not spread to any other portion of my body. He said that he didn't see any signs of the mucous growth in my abdominal cavity, but that follow up appointments would be needed to make sure nothing took hold over time. Even still, we are going to gather all of my records and send them to a specialist in a type of rare cancer called PMP Syndrome and see what they say. Because of the growth that I had, I am at a higher risk for this disease.

Tomorrow will be day 6 in the hospital. I am determined to make it the last day I spend in the hospital for this surgery. As long as I can stomach the pain and nausea on the meds they give me, I just want to go home and be with Kari, River, Wren, and even my mother as she stays for a couple more days to help out. Back on the road to healing.