Post-surgery

November 20, 2009: (I spent 7 days in the hospital immediately post-surgery)  

I have a feeding tube, a tracheostomy tube, drains for my neck and leg, a catheter, a pulse oximeter, an IV for pain medications and that’s all I can really remember right now. These pain medications are quite strong, and I find that I’m spending all of my time sleeping. 

I have been so afraid to look into the mirror that I avoided it for the first several days, but finally looked. How depressing and kind of scary looking.  I didn't think I would look quite like this...

There were lots of things that happened in the hospital, but most of it I don’t remember since I was on some very strong pain medications. I do remember this next event quite distinctly.

I had a ‘trach’ tube which was annoying, since nurses had to come in and ‘clean’ it every 2 hours. To clean this, they put drops of saline solution down the tube, which in turn causes you to cough. Kind of like when you swallow water and you choke/cough because it “went down the wrong tube.”   This is not a fun feeling.  One night a nurse came into my room to clean my tube, and I coughed, but then some mucous got stuck and was blocking my airway. I could not breathe. I just know that I was extremely afraid and then the nurse ran out of the room. He came back with another nurse who used a machine to suction the mucous out. SCARIEST experience I’ve had so far I think.

November 24, 2009: It is 2 weeks post-surgery and I can honestly say I feel and look like shit. My face is swollen on the left side so much that I do not have a neck, my leg is swollen to probably double its normal size and I have a hole where the tracheostomy tube was.  I am not able to chew any foods, so everything gets run through the blender. This diet is not appetizing, not that I really have much of an appetite anyway.  I have an air cast to wear on my leg and I’m not allowed to weight bear on it right now, and I have a walker until I’m stable enough for crutches.  

I feel like an old woman, but worse because I look like I’ve been run over by a car. I also require a hand held shower head and a shower chair in the bathroom now. I am sleeping on the main floor of the house, since stairs are not safe. We rented a hospital bed and had it delivered to the house. I’m not allowed to sleep lying flat, so I need the hospital bed so I can sleep halfway sitting up.  This is very uncomfortable. I feel overwhelmed and angry and sad.

I keep thinking about all of the things I should be doing right now, and how much of my life I’m missing out on.  I think about how much of my life I’m going to miss out on this year. I should be in school, working on homework and studying with my classmates. I should be back in La Crosse living like a 21 year old. Why did this happen to me? I keep wondering why. I’ll never get an answer I suppose, but it doesn’t keep me from wondering. I should be thankful for this surgical procedure and that cancer can be treated. I wonder what these treatments will be like. How do they know how to treat it, if they still haven’t figured out exactly what it is? Is this just a trial and error, we’ll try this and hope it works?