My mom’s surgery was… bad. I mean, it went as well as they were expecting. Her skin was too tight from the double mastectomy to do the implants, so they put in what they call “tissue expanders,” which from my understanding are basically deflated implants that will be filled up later, after her skin stretches a bit to accomodate them. I’m sure plastic surgery experts out there are rolling their eyes at my misunderstanding of what exactly happened, but that’s more or less the idea.
Anyway, that part was all fine and good. What sucked is that the anaesthesia made her really, really sick. And then they gave her demerol for pain, which made her even more nauseated. So yesterday and last night were pretty rough. She couldn’t eat or drink anything, she kept dry heaving. It was bad.
Also, with the amount of pain she was in, she couldn’t get herself out of bed. She slept in a guest room so she wouldn’t wake up my dad, and we gave her a cowbell (swear to God, a literal cowbell; my parents are big Mississippi State fans, so they have a couple of them in the house), and she rang it when she needed help with something so I could run from the room where Catie and I were sleeping to go help her. Miraculously, the cowbell didn’t wake up either my dad or Catie, just me. She only needed me twice in the middle of the night to help her up so she could take a pain pill or go to the bathroom. It was really no big deal when you compare it to the amount that a new baby wakes you up.
She’s a lot better today. The anaesthesia takes about 24 hours to get out of your system, so the nausea started to pass this afternoon and she’s been able to eat a little bit here and there. So that’s good.
Unrelated: last night, Catie talked to Dave on the phone and actually seemed to understand that it was her Daddy’s voice that she was hearing and talking to. It was pretty cool, she was so happy to talk to him that she wouldn’t give the phone back to me. Later, when I had to call my dad’s cousin to tell her how the surgery had gone (my dad had me call her, since talking about the surgery entailed “female stuff,” i.e. boobs), Catie thought that it was still Dave on the phone and she had a huge meltdown when I wouldn’t hand the phone over to her to talk. Poor baby. She’s having a great time here, but she is going to be SO happy to see her Daddy when we get home.
Oh, and per Dave’s request:
Pics from the trip so far are here.