My awesome parents woke up to drive over an hour to the hospital and arrive before 6am. I love them, and I was happy to have them with me.
At the hospital, I definitely felt anxious. Would I have side effects? Would I even make it through the surgery alive? Would it be successful? Luckily, the hospital I was treated at was a top-notch place. I quickly moved through professional admissions, and then went through screening with a nurse and got changed into robes. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, I was brought up to the operator floor. There, I met with my surgeon, then the nurse assisting, then the anesthesiologist. Everyone was great, and I felt a little more at ease. Then, suddenly, the anesthesiologist called me into the OR where everyone else was waiting. I hopped up onto a bed and they got to work inserting an IV. My surgeon and was very kind and encouraging as I was given a sedative. Then, I briefly remembering them saying they were sending me off to "la la land" and I kept my eyes open for just a few moments.
Boom. Awake again, my surgeon told me I was great and that everything went well. I started shaking hands with everyone as they were busy just trying to get me off to the recovery room. When I got there, I was blasted with some Demerol through my IV and felt pretty relaxed. I was sleepy, and tried a little experiment. I relaxed, tried to relax my airway, breath shallow breaths. Normally, I could not induce apnea by doing this while awake, but I could feel my airway start to narrow and vibrate. Now, nothing. Just air moving effortlessly in and out of my lungs. I've swollen up since then, but after my surgeon told me that my tonsils were each the size of a golf ball upon excision, I am feeling pretty upbeat.
The rest of the day was spent in mostly drug-induced pseudo-rest. I constantly complained of pain greater than what I felt and got blasted with Demerol about six times. I spent the night in the hospital with a very flatulent older roommate, but got a few hours of sleep that seemed deep and restful. Too many post-surgical effects to know what things could really be like, but I think there was a bit more peace to my rest. For maybe the first time in my life.
Today has been painful and uncomfortable, but I can't help thinking how most of what I have read online about similar surgeries must be written by utter weaklings. Yeah, it hurts, but I just had SURGERY in my damn throat! It feels like a bad sore throat, and I personally find the discomfort of the swelling and wanting to be ginger with these tender areas more of a problem than any actual pain. Eating isn't fun, but I have managed to slurp down enough soup, pureed sweet potatoes, and juices to get by. I haven't been very talkative, either, but the pages upon pages I have read about how horrific it is to recover from this surgery seem like nonsense so far. Like I said, I had my throat cut into and golf ball sized glands removed 38 hours ago. Honestly, I think I feel pretty good considering.
I'll keep blogging every day for the first few days of this, and I'll keep editing what I have written so far as pain meds might be clouding me a bit.
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