3 days of updates in one

Sorry I haven't posted since Tuesday. Wednesday was a boring and depressing day. Absolutely nothing new to report. Everything was the same. That is to say, my bowels didn't appear to wake up. I spent most of the day wallowing in self-pity and depression. After 8+ days, I was getting tired of the whole situation. The highlight of the day was when, later in the day, I was wheeled away to have a few X-Rays taken. A few hours later, I was wheeled back to the same part of the hospital for a CT Scan (foreshadowing??).

Foreshadowing, indeed. Just like with the first X-rays that were taken when I was admitted, the new set showed my bowels to be swollen and distended ABOVE the point where the surgery was performed. Below the surgical "patch" the colon was deflated and atrophied. In other words, for some reason an obstruction had reappeared at the site of surgery. Such was the news I woke to yesterday morning. Still depressed from Wednesday, the surgical team came in early yesterday morning to inform me that another surgery would be needed to remove the scar tissue that caused the obstruction. As with the first surgery, there was very little time for discussion. Erin and I talked it over for 5 - 10 minutes before agreeing that another surgery would be the best course of action (the other option being to wait for days on end, with no action being taken and no guarantee of improvement). As before, within a short time frame I was wheeled back to surgery for a repeat of the earlier fun and games.

The surgery was a success and the scar tissue was removed. It's still too soon to determine whether or not bowel activity will return to normal, or how soon, but the doctors all seem optimistic. The worst part of this second surgery was the post-op pain. Since the surgeons went through the same incisions and retracted all the same muscles, the trauma to my gut built on what was already pretty beat up from the first surgery. Needless to say, the pain was unbearable. In the recovery room, they pumped me full of all flavors of narcotics, all mixed in heart-stopping cocktails (morphine, dilaudid, fentanol, etc). It took a little while but I was ultimately able to tolerate the pain well enough to return to my regular room.

For most of the rest of the day I slept and/or begged for narcotics. As the anesthesia and recovery room cocktails began to wear off the single dosage I was prescribed was insufficient. Around 1:30 in the morning I woke screaming in pain. Unfortunately, my throat was so dry and scratchy that there was no noise behind my screams. I called the nurse and we spent the next couple of hours battling with the on-call resident to increase the dosage of the pain med. Unfortunately, this particular resident was extremely cautious with narcotics and I had to wait until the attending arrived at around 7am before the pain medication was adjusted to a point that allowed for minor comfort. By the afternoon I was switched to a non-narcotic pain med that made the pain tolerable to the point that I could walk around, sit up and even change my clothes.

So, that's where we are right now. I'm still a little groggy and woozy but not too badly. The pain is manageable and I feel nearly human. I hope that in the next day or so I can go off the narcotics and become more alert. Fingers crossed, in the same timeframe it'll be nice to see bowel activity starting back up again.