Smile

January 28, 2006 from my spiral notebook:

What felt like minutes later, was actually 4 hours. They were trying to move me from the surgical table to another hospital bed. I was in what is called “recovery”. My head felt like it had been worked over by a base-ball bat, and I was experiencing the most intense pain I’d ever known. I think having triplets would have been easier. I was starting to shiver and shake. My husband had to intervene numerous times on my behalf that evening as they were experiencing a rather heavy load that night.

After receiving morphine things started to look up a bit. Then the nausea. Then I became allergic to morphine. Then another shot of something else. I just kept thinking…. keep those drugs coming. I don’t want to feel a thing! In time I would begin to feel the 2 inch long incision in my abdomen. From there, they took a piece of fat to plug the hole left in my nasal cavity to protect my brain. Also in time, I would begin to feel the numerous holes around my head, where they literally screwed my skull into some sort of apparatus to keep my head from moving even the slightest. Two days later my surgeon came in to remove the packing from my nose. What felt like a couple of 30 ft. blue spruce trees being ripped out of my nose, were actually a couple of what appeared to be very large tampax.
I thought I’d pass out.
I didn’t.
My husband screamed “Oh my god”.
I thought he might pass out.
He didn’t.
I think I was just counting down the minutes to my next pain relief.

The first 5 days after surgery were the worst. Had to sleep up-right. Had constant drainage. Congestion. After all… they broke my nose.
It sucked.
It’s over.

Later for my post-op appointment with my surgeon I found out things didn’t quite go as planned. The tumor was full of blood, and had it ruptured elsewhere, I would have been in “big trouble”. It was also encased in a fibrous material that had the strength of “shoe leather”. My surgeon said he had to carve it out like wood. After scraping the last of it out, they flushed the hole and the outside of my pituitary gland with pure alcohol, hopefully killing any cells left, to avoid re-growth.

I hugged him and thanked him for saving my life.

I wish I could hug and personally thank all of you for your concerns and prayers…. you all saved my life!

Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

SMILE