Can you believe my insurance company thinks a mastectomy is an outpatient procedure?
So I was originally scheduled to be in the hospital for 23 hours, and I planned on being home Tuesday morning. It’s called a “simple” mastectomy, so I expected it to be a breeze, except for the actual losing a breast part. I even asked my kid to bring me a good cup of coffee at about 3:30, a couple of hours after surgery.
I was wheeled from the recovery room down a hallway, I must have dozed because I remember waking up and seeing my friend Tammy.
“What are you doing here? You’re a maternity nurse!”
“You’re on the maternity ward, and I’m your nurse.” (So lucky! My friend was my nurse, and being on the maternity ward meant having a private room.)
There were 5 visitors waiting for me to come out of surgery, and there were texts and phone calls to answer. And I was wasted. And I had some complications that showed up pretty quick, extreme reactions to anesthesia and excess bleeding. The bleeding started while the visitors were there. And later that night I passed out (on my way to the bathroom) and projectile puked on 3 nurses.
Oh, and remember Raj? My gynecologist? He showed up around 7 AM. Tammy followed him in. “She’s not your patient!”
“Yes she is!”
“Hey, Patricia! I wanted to follow up, but I wanted to wait until after your surgery. We found some unusual cells on your cervix, if it’s cancer, we can cure it easily with a hysterectomy. When you get out of here, I want you to come in to the office for an internal sonogram.” It was not such a good time to get this news.
The hospital stay was actually quite pleasant. The combination of blood loss and Vicodin had me pretty wasted. I hardly noticed the taking of vital signs every 15 minutes. Or the numerous blood takings. I did notice how they had to keep moving the IV as my veins blew up. I also noticed the 3 transfusions-getting a stranger’s blood is pretty disgusting, and it hurts.
There were lots of visitors, I tried to watch TV (I could not pay attention with all those commercials), I brought a book and my knitting. But thank God for netflix,wifi, and my laptop, because I watched the entire first season of Sister Wives. With all the trauma, drugs, and tubes, that’s about all I accomplished during the hospital stay.
Notice I haven’t mentioned pain? The actual surgical site never really hurt very much; maybe a 3 or 4 at its worst. The IV sites? 9 or 10.
Oh, and the food sucked. I went home Thursday afternoon.
Good Day Sunshine 
You’re a strong woman. Keep it up. I’ll be thinking about you.
Over here from Derfwad Manor. Your story is so compelling now I’m going to go read it all.
Heal up. I’m remembering my recovery from a less complicated surgery this past May – take it slow, don’t rush it, and heal up. I chuckled when you wrote “that’s about all I accomplished” – because I, too, felt like I had to be doing something while in the hospital – but that’s totally not true! you don’t have to accomplish anything but healing.
With all you have going on, it was so nice of you to comment on my blog! I had surgery two months ago and can confirm that IVs SUCK. Also? I don’t know how anyone gets addicted to Vicodin – for me, it was the WORST! Made me feel totally weird and sick and didn’t even put a dent in the pain. Vodka tonics work much better.
You don’t sound like you did much better than me with your hospital stay! I told my nurses they sure knew a lot of ways to torture people while telling them they were trying to help them get better! I am glad you got that behind you!