I blame the drugs...

I know, I know... I'm the worst. Pre-surgery, I had all of these elaborate plans to have the most awesome, up-to-date blog ever once I got home from the hospital. But as it turns out, narcotics aren't very conducive to blogging (or anything but sleeping, for that matter). But today is the day. I managed to eat a scrambled egg this morning, so I am riding that top of the world feeling right back into the blogging world. So here we go!

Hospital Stay
My vacation to the lovely Mt Sinai was overall pretty decent. After a ~9.5 hour surgery (that went perfectly, to quote my surgeon!) I was moved to ICU, where at one point I woke up and thought I was still in surgery, and couldn't make noise because I had a tube in both my mouth and my nose. That was quite possibly the most terrifying moment of my entire life. Ugh, I shudder just thinking about it! That was short-lived though, and then I realized where I was. I don't remember a whole lot about ICU except that I felt like I couldn't breathe most of the time. I had a little notepad to write notes on to communicate, and while most are illegible, many can be made out to say something dramatic along the lines of "I can't breathe" or "I'm drowning". There's also one that requests that Steph (who slept over with me) put Call Me Maybe on my iPod...go figure. The heart wants what the heart wants. That night was quite traumatic actually. The nurse was great but I remember only being frustrated by the respiratory tech. I have memories of complaining that I couldn't breathe and her going to look for another tube, and coming back saying she couldn't find it etc. At one point I was freaking out so much that she decided to just yank out the nose and mouth tubes at the same time...that was extremely unpleasant to say the least, but at least then I didn't feel like I was drowning. But all in all, I survived!

Not a happy camper in ICU!

The next day I got promoted to a normal room. The actual move was pretty awful because they reclined my head all the way back, which obviously is a no-go after you've just had surgery on your face. Call me crazy, but that just makes good sense, no? So that was painful, and they also kept whacking my bed into the door/wall etc on my way into the new room. Silver lining of this though is that I was screaming so loudly that within 5 minutes in my new room, my new roomie asked to be moved, so I got a private room! Success! I really should thank the less-than-gentle transporters. (I was going to get a new roommate starting Thursday but my dad saved the day and got them to keep it private. Really made such a difference.) Wednesday was also not much fun, but Steph stayed overnight with me again like a champ. She's racking up mad sister points during this whole ordeal. The pain wasn't completely unbearable because I was given a pain pump. Unfortunately though, I blew through my 4 hour allotment of drugs in the first 2 hours, so the resident Pain Team had to come and give me the instructions again- just because I can give myself a dose every 5 minutes doesn't mean I have to. Thursday morning, 3 of my 4 surgeons came in and told me that my instructions for the day were to not lie down...I had to start walking around and spend my time sitting up in a chair. Scary! This was a good day for the most part. I had an amazing nurse, Mary (I lucked out and had her Friday and Saturday as well), I tore up the 11th floor making laps around the nurses station, and my old roommate Laura came and hung out with me in the afternoon. My family took turns so I was never alone. They rock. Elizabeth even subwayed down all by herself to bring me fresh pjs :)

Thursday- 2 days post-op. Up in my chair!

That night though I received, shall we say, less than ideal care. A few things that weren't the greatest about my night nurse: I got my 9:30 meds at 10:30, she didn't plug in my IV (thank goodness my mom heard the beeping in the middle of the night), she was nowhere to be found most of the time, she only gave me a half dose of tylenol because they were "out" (did you know a hospital could run out of the rare, rare drug tylenol?), and made up my vitals (as in, she wrote down my temp, bp and oxygen levels without actually measuring them). One of my surgeons also informed me that afternoon (Friday) that I was in so much pain that morning because I just didn't receive my night time dose of narcotics. K, COOL. When you have your face cut up for almost a whole day, it's not exactly good times to go medicine-free. I'm not letting that miserable night mar my memory of my hospital stay though, because most of the rest of it was excellent. One of my surgeons was particularly awesome and spent so much time helping me in my room. Her name was also Ali so we bonded instantly! The rest of the time in the hospital until I left on Saturday morning was spent drinking water and apple juice, walking in circles around the hallways, and sleeping. Almost all of the Wither lab came and visited me on Friday which was lovely. I wasn't a very engaging host because I couldn't talk a whole lot, so Steph took the liberty of postponing most of my other visitors til I got home. Here are a couple photos from my last day in the hospital- remember I'm extremely swollen!

Saturday- you should see the other guy

Saying goodbye to Dr. Ali and Mary!

Home time!

I've been home now since last Saturday, the 14th. I came home to my room and house all decorated by Elizabeth with welcome home signs and the like. Sadly, the kiddo had to jet off to camp that Sunday but she's been able to call and check in a few times. It really hasn't been that awful of a recovery, actually. My parents might beg to differ because they have to get me up every other hour for my meds and fresh ice but other than that it's not awful. There's so much more to say about my home life, but I'll leave that for another post. I do, though, want to give a huge thank you to everyone. My room is full of beautiful flowers, and so many people have taken the time to come and keep me company. I've received so many thoughtful cards, care packages and messages of good fortune. I feel so very lucky, and I'm so overwhelmed by the outpour of support I've been getting. It really does make this all that much easier. I'll end this little post with my first "before and after" photo, circa 13 days post-op. More like before and during I suppose, because I'm still quite swollen, but just to give you an idea of the shape change. This isn't the best photo, but this is one of the best angle-matches so that's why I like it. Check out my super cool hairdo and my battle scars! Voila!!

Before & After at 13 days!!

More to come!

A