Recovery Time

Greetings, from the comfort of my king-size bed. I'll give you the run down of the events the past couple days.....

We arrived at the hospital at 7am on Wednesday to get checked in for my thyroidectomy.  After getting changed into my beautiful hospital gown, I was shown to my bed. Then my friendly nurse gave me an IV and did an EKG (for my heart murmur). Then, as we waited, there was a slight panic because they forgot to give me a pregnancy test. Seriously?! Wouldn't that have been the surprise of the century, to find out that we were preggers. Luckily, Dr. Sudela's tubal ligation is still holding strong and I am without child. :) Finally, the surgeon and anesthesiologist visited with me for a bit. After I said my goodbye to Jordan and got a quick kiss, I was wheeled down the hallway. And that's the last thing I remembered, because I was asleep before we even made it to the OR.

They said the surgery was supposed to take two hours, but it took three instead. I can only imagine Jordan's nerves, as he waited for the surgeon to come to him with news. I vaguely remember voices throughout the day as I woke for a few minutes at a time in recovery. I just remember being in a lot of pain, not being able to speak, and some creepy guy (aka Jordan) constantly staring at me from my bedside. I slept most of the day and used a notepad to convey most messages. They treated me with some awesome morphine for most of the day, but switched to Vicodin later in the evening.  But since I hadn't eaten anything, it made me pretty nauseous. Thankfully, after feeling like I was going to puke for awhile and getting some Zofran to battle the nausea, I was all good again.  We stayed overnight, and Jordan even got his own hospital bed to sleep in. Later the next afternoon, another surgeon finally came in to check on me. It was then time to remove the nasty drain from my neck. I thought Jordan was going to pass out while he watched them do it. Don't get me wrong; it felt weird having it pulled out of me, but I'm sure watching was even worse. Then we were sent on our way, with a prescription for some Vicodin and a follow-up appt. on the 26th.

Jordan then got me home and settled. I swear, he's been the best little nurse ever. Between fixing me food, getting my meds, taking care of the boys, and helping me wash all the dried blood out of my hair, he's been awesome. It's just hard to get comfortable. There's definitely more pain than I was expecting. It feels like I have the worse case of strep throat, whiplash from being in a wreck and unable to move my neck, and my voice is still very hoarse (nerves are bruised and may take a while for my voice to recover). I haven't had a good look at my incision yet; there are steri-strips covering it until my appt.on the 26th. But it's a two-inch incision dead center on my throat. There's going to be no hiding that thing. :(  I spent most of today laying around in the bed, taking little naps. But I did get a special delivery of some chocolate covered strawberries and the cutest Get Well cake pops today!

Recovery is slow, but I'm making it. The kids don't quite understand that Mommy can't pick them up and they need to be gentle with me. Big thanks for Uncle LoLo for keeping the boys while we were at the hospital! He's definitely a pro at handling those two little rascals by now. :)

The surgeon said the pathology results should be back by Monday, so hopefully I'll know about those then. Definitely saying prayers that we get good news on that front. But it looks like I have another week or so of lying around, trying not to get bored.  Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers!