It's been a week since I had my surgery, and I'm finally feeling up to writing about how it's going. The first couple of days after surgery went by super fast because I was well medicated, and I slept whenever the nurses would leave me alone long enough to, but I thought I might go over what happened the day of the surgery. First, I got to the hospital at 5:45, and they called me back to change into my gown and get a urine sample.Then they had me lay down in my bed and the nurses started to prepare me by getting all my information, getting my IV started, and attaching a whole bunch of stuff to me. When they were done my parents were allowed to come wait with me, one at a time, for about 45 minutes while the operating room was being prepared. When those 45 minutes were up they took me to the operating room where I was given anesthesia. The next thing I knew I was waking up a little more than 11 hours later. During those 11 hours my surgical team cut open the right side of my neck where they took tissue that contained about 10 lymph nodes and transferred it to my right ankle. My ankle was too swollen to close up so they ended up having to take a skin graft from the left side of my groin in order to stitch everything back together.
When I woke up everything was sore except for the parts they worked on which I thought was weird, and I do have to say I'm pretty hilarious waking up from anesthesia. I might have to post it, but I'm not quite sure if I want to yet... As of now things are going alright, but I do have to admit it hasn't been as easy as I thought it was going to be. The first time I looked at my ankle I felt like I had just made the worse mistake of my life. It was super swollen and the stitches and the color, everything hit me all at once, and it was not what I was expecting. The doctor told me not to freak out because it will get better with time, and it will take time! As for the incision on my neck and groin, They look like they are going to heal very nicely, and now I can tell cool stories about how I got a huge scar across my neck. I feel pretty good, but it seems as though things are taking a little pause. The plan was originally to start dangling my leg over the side of the bed on Sunday- 5 minutes every 4 hours and increase the dangling time by 5 minutes everyday, but the surgeon said my ankle doesn't look ready for it and the skin from the skin graft isn't adapting very well. With these set backs everything it kind of moving very slow, but we will see what happens in the next couple days. Comments are closed.
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AuthorHi, my name is Sydney, and I have Primary Lymphedema. I created this blog to share my journey, and I hope that by sharing my story I can help those who are on a similar path. Archives
April 2017
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