Surgery Complications

September 25th Recap-

I had an anal skin tag removal caused by a post pregnancy hemmerhoid. It was causing pain and infections due to the size and location. It was nearly the size of half my pointer finger, and it didn’t want to go easily. It took 4 shots of Lidocaine to completely numb me due to there being nerves and blood flow to the tag. I had it since the beginning of my 3rd trimester, and my daughter is now roughly a year and a half old. The surgeon removed it, but never gave any instructions. No post op help at all. No pain medication, didn’t tell me what to expect. 3 hours after the removal was over, the gauze fell off and I began bleeding profusely. Blood going down my leg-I stood in my shower for a few minutes to minimize the amount of blood getting on the carpet of my bathroom. I then drove myself to the Emergency Room, and ended up bleeding all over the hospital bed. The doctor who saw me said by no means was it supposed to bleed like that. It wasn’t really supposed to bleed at all until my first bowel movement following the surgery. He numbed me again after finding where exactly on the incision it was coming from, and carterised it with silver nitrate. He told me it was an open incision, no stitches or anything. Something my surgeon failed to tell me. They stopped the bleeding and gave me a few Hydrocodone pills to last me the night and instructed me to see the surgeon first thing the next day. I took the pain pills as soon as the Lidocaine wore off, waited 35 minutes, but still there was no relief. I was in agonizing pain. I was crying, hoping the pills would kick in soon. I called the on call surgeon, told him I didn’t have any instructions on what to do and that the pills the ER gave me weren’t working. He said I had to find a ride to the hospital since I couldn’t drive with narcotics in my system and if I couldnt find a ride, he’d come get me himself. My neighbor ended up driving me, and the on call surgeon called the ER, told them I was coming, and what to give me. I sat in that hospital room for what felt like forever, waiting for the doctor to come in and take my pain away. It was after midnight at this point and I had cried so much that my nose was stuffed up and my ear felt like it was going to explode from the sinus pressure. Finally he came in, armed with 2 very large syringes of Midocaine-a stronger and longer lasting version of Lidocaine. The pain went away, but where he stuck the needle for the numbing medicine, I started bleeding bad again. So for the second time in one night, I managed to be covered in blood and drench a hospital bed as well. Doctor in the ER said that just from what he’d seen, I probably lost close to a liter of blood on Tuesday. I found a ride home and finally got the sleep my body was longing for.

September 26th Recap-

I woke up sore, but in slightly less pain than the night before. I had my CT scan of my neck the Hematologist ordered to check my lymph nodes. Then directly following I went to my surgeon’s office to hopefully get some answers about what happened. He explained that in his experience, not stitching up the incision has caused dramatically less pain than stitching it would have, because there’s no pull on the skin or muscles in such a sensitive area. He doesn’t know what caused the bleeding, but he did prescribe me Norco, and told me that in order to limit the chance of bleeding again, that I was going to be taken off work until my post surgery check up next Wednesday. He wants me on bed rest(I live alone and things need done, so I’m trying to follow it as much as I can). I turned in the paperwork to my employer, and am on a leave of absence until next week. It won’t cost me points, but it’s unpaid leave meaning I’m going to be stretched awfully thin until I can get back to work. I took the Norco every 4-6 hours after I got home like I was supposed to, and stayed in bed bored out of my mind.

September 27, 2018

I woke up groggy, and still very sore. I still haven’t taken a poo since about 3:20pm on Tuesday. If I don’t have my first post op bowel movement tomorrow, back to the surgeon I go to figure out why. I’ve downed about a half case of water bottles and began taking fiber supplements to make sure I’m not constipated. Still taking the Norco every 4-6 hours and sleeping a lot, though the pills are starting to make me feel nauseous once they’ve nearly worn off. I have a pretty white bucket next to my bed just in case. There’s not really much I can say about how anything else is doing, seeing as I’m stuck in bed unless there’s something I actually have to do.

Here’s to a Speedy Recovery…