Health Update

Well, I'm two weeks post-op, and I'm doing OK

The first few days were pretty rough, but that was expected and Irish Woman and I had planned for it.  Thank goodness for good friends and Girlie Bear, who were a real help to Irish Woman while she split her time between the family and the hospital.  I spent two nights in the hospital instead of one because my doctor's practice forgot to tell the hospital to discharge me, but since I was still on IV morphine for pain until the end of the second night, that was a blessing in disguise.

My post-hospital pain management took some adjusting, but eventually I was comfortable.  My doctor started me out on liquid Percocet, but I had to have him change that to another medicine because every time I took Percocet, I'd pass out, have horrific nightmares, and wake up with the worst tension headaches of my life.  Once my meds were adjusted, all that would happen was that I would get kind of dopey and fall asleep, but I was comfortable.  I switched over to over the counter pain relief on Sunday, and I'm doing OK.

I've been able to eat a little normal food for the last few days, but my diet is still mainly made up of jello, pudding, yogurt, and protein shakes.  I've had ice cream a few times, but not too much.  I tried drinking some broth, but it tasted like a mouthful of chicken grease, so I haven't had too much of that. When I weighed myself this afternoon, I was down 15 pounds from my weight on the morning of my surgery.  That curve is probably going to flatten as I start eating more and more normal food, but I've cut a lot of the crap out of my diet, so I expect to continue to lose weight slowly.

At my check-up this afternoon, the doctor said my throat is healing as well as can be expected, but it's going to be about another month or so before I'm back to 100%.  He said that I can expect to have a sore throat for a couple more weeks, but I can eat whatever I want as long as I can stand the pain.

I started back to work today.  My boss is being very understanding, and is letting me work half days for the rest of the week at the office.  I will dial in from home after lunch.  Next week is a short week for me, so I'm easing back into work.

So, to sum up, I'm doing OK.  Recovery from this was a bit rough and painful at first, but after spending the first week pretty much flat on my back, I've been able to do a little more every day.  Irish Woman tells me that there is a noticeable lack of snoring when I sleep, which is one of the main reasons I did this.  Hopefully that continues.

For those of you who stuck with me while I was blogging while stoned on pain meds, thank you.  I've gone back and read my posts, and I can tell that a lot of my filters were definitely in the off position.  Hope I wasn't too obnoxious.