God gave me so much peace the day of the surgery.  I can’t believe how well I handed it all.  Having Mike with me every step of the way has been such a comfort. 

In the pre-opt room, I learned that the surgeon’s team had been working for weeks on my case, making sure everything was as corn free as possible.  I was happy to wake up 11.5 hrs later to hear that surgery went well.. and that I had had no bad reactions.  Yay!

The week since has had it’s ups and downs.  It was such a blessing to have my mom stay 24/7 with me in the hospital.  The lortab that I had had specially made without corn gave me hallucinations so I ended up taking some not so corn free percocet instead.  Returned home from the hospital Saturday afternoon.

Sunday was a good day.  Monday another story.  Vomited all day long.  Bye,  Bye, nice, pain meds.

Tuesday, I went to see Dr. Paula Gilliam, a chiropractor, to see if she could help me with acupuncture.  Loved it.  It helped with the nausea and my post surgery lungs (risk of pneumonia) which were worse after a day of vomiting.

3 AM Wednesday morning, I couldn’t stand it any more.  One of the stitches holding one of the drain tubes in under my arm was ripping through my side, felt like a fish hook.  I went in the bathroom to take a look and sure enough it was bleeding.

My choice was to take it out right then so I could get some sleep, or to wait another 36 hrs till I could drive 2 bumpy hrs. down to see Dr. Fix during his office hrs. to have him take it out.  I had been off the drugs for quite a while at that point, which made it easy to make a rational decision.  

I was so happy once I had the first stitch snipped and drain tube out (almost did a little dance), that I decided to pull out three more.  I left the last one in that was still draining quite a bit.   Luckily for me, one of my drains had lost suction in the hospital and I knew what to do from watching them pull that one out.

My body wasn’t as happy as I was to be rid of them and I ended up even more nauseous than before.  Acupuncture to the rescue again.  Wednesday was my first good day.  I ate, I watched TV for the first time and felt half alive.  Thank you Dr. Paula Gilliam.

Today was even a better day.  More acupuncture, a good pathology report, and Mike and I are off to Chick-Fil-A to celebrate.  Thank You, Jesus!