Hernia surgery and recovery

On May 4^th, I had a phone appointment with the surgeon.  After speaking with me and seeing how much pain I was in, he decided that I needed to go to the ER to get admitted.  Since we had Vincent at home and Pat was working, his grandparents came to pick him up for the week.  Within an hour from the phone call I arrived at Montfort ER.  I was then admitted.  Due to covid-19 they closed the day surgery area to the rest of hospital and admitted all the emergency surgery patients.  That is when the waiting game started. I was starving as I didn’t eat since the night before.  There were more urgent cases going in like appendicitis.  At 9:30pm they advised me that I would have to wait for the next day for surgery.  They provided me with an egg sandwich and jello.   I was so happy to be eating for the first time in 24 hours.  Tuesday was also a waiting game.  I wasn’t allowed to eat.  There were four appendicitis cases and two broken hips.  By 9pm I was advised that surgery will be Wednesday.  And Wednesday would definitely happen as when you get admitted for Emergency surgery they have 48 hours to do surgery. During the night I was woken up by the nurse and my oxygen levels were very low. I was put on oxygen for a few hours. I was able to get off the oxygen and sleep a few hours. Finally, at 7:30am on Wednesday I was advised that I would be having surgery.  The surgeon’s first case of the day didn’t show up so I was first.  By 7:45am I was in the operating room.  At 10:30am I was awake in recovery.

What I recently learned from the surgeon is that my hernia was really stuck. It was the size of a fist. My intestines were less than 2mm away from getting stuck.  It took so much time to fix that they didn’t have enough time to install a mesh to prevent it from happening again. I was told there is a good chance that I will need to same surgery in a few years.

Back to the surgery day, I was doing so well after surgery. I was able to get up and walk around. At 2pm, I was off oxygen.  I was then released. By 3:30pm I was home with some Subway to eat as I was really hungry.  I was given dilauded pain medication and told to take advill/Tylenol to help.  The pain didn’t really hit until Thursday.  The pain was unbearable. I had to take a dilaudid in the morning to help then stay on top of the Tylenol and advil. I couldn’t even get out of bed by myself. Pat had to help me. The recovery was honestly a lot harder than my c-section.  It took me a few days to get the pain under control.

For recovery I got a lot of help, my mom came down to take care of Vincent for a few days.  Vincent also got to stay with his grandparents at the cottage. He loves it there. I can’t lift for seven weeks after surgery.   This is very hard because I want to be able to help take care of Vincent.  I recently had an appointment with the surgeon. That is when I found out that they weren’t able to install the mesh.  He also was adamant for me to be careful for another four weeks bringing it to seven weeks of healing.  My incision is still very sensitive, but looks really good.

If there are any other news on this I will post another blog.