Surgery 5 - Two Week Update

It's time for the 2-week update. I wonder how many more 2 week updates I'll have to write in the future. Hopefully, my surgical rate will slow down. I just had my 4 month anniversary of surgery #4 the other day. The 11 month anniversary of surgery #3 (dumbest choice of my life) is coming up in 4 days. The 4 year anniversary of surgery #1 will also be in 4 days. I mean that's just a myriad of anniversaries I'm not interested in ever having.

I'm sitting here with an ice pack on one of the incisions sipping some CBD tea (helps with pain)- which now might be illegal to buy in Ohio. There's a bunch of hogwash going on right now with the Farm Bill which allowed the sale of CBD oil in 2014. Now all of the sudden with the medical marijuana laws changing, "they" decided to change the interpretation of the Farm Bill and want to make it illegal to sell this stuff. I give it to my dog. I take it multiple times a day to help with pain. I'm gonna be heading to Kentucky or Indiana if necessary to continue to buy it. It makes zero sense to me to outlaw this stuff - it's so much better for your body than Advil or Tylenol! Not addictive. Literally zero side effects. I'm actually so passionate about it that I'd be willing to speak in front of the Ohio Senate/Congress if necessary. In Georgia, it's helped significantly with the Opioid crisis. But I digress...grumpily.

If I have learned nothing, every surgery is different. Every recovery is different. Nothing is really ever like the one before. Spending 5 days in the hospital was a first - let me just say, my back was killing me by day 3. No one should have to stay in a hospital that long. Magda, my closest companion, during the long stay was my IV bag carrier. I got really tired of seeing her too. I had an hour break from her on day 4 and it was glorious.

Soooo let's just say bowel resections aren't a walk in the park. It's actually a fairly significant surgery (you get this kind of surgery with Colorectal cancer, Chron's, Ulcerative Colitis) and I probably don't give my body enough credit for going through a major thing like that. That's why I had to stay in the hospital for so long and live on bland, mashed up food longer than anyone would ever be inclined to do. My diet will probably remain pretty altered for a while longer. I have to eat small portions multiple times a day instead of 3 meals a day. This whole resection feels like an entirely separate recovery than the endometriosis and nerve stuff I'm also recovering from. Oh, I forgot to mention I did actually have a partial bowel obstruction - the very thing I've been trying not to die from!!!!!

On to the endo side of recovery - it sucks. That nightmarish ovarian remnant glued itself to 3 different locations. I still have a lot of nerve pain from that which disappeared for the first 3 days post-op and then returned with a vengeance. I became really depressed for several days just feeling like we've thrown a massive amount of money into yet another surgery and I'm still very broken. It's difficult to think that the pain won't get better after you've done everything you know how (including seeing the best surgeon in the country!). They say with nerve pain, it often gets worse before it gets better. That is my prayer - that it is just part of the agonizing process and it will improve with time. I get an hour or so in the morning without too much pain and more if I stay in bed longer. As the day goes on, the pain gets worse and is my constant companion.

They say time heals all wounds - maybe that will apply to me too. And just maybe, I won't have to write a 2-week update for a few years? And y'all will get a break from reading them :P