Hosta la vista baby

 Thursday Nov 10, 2022. It's surgery day! Gosh, so much has happened since my last post. Having Cushings really put me in such a bad spot mentally and physically. 

My instructions were to wake up at 3:30am and drink some gatorade. It's a new thing they are telling you to do to help come out of anesthesia easier. The hospital had me check in like 5am on surgery day. Needless to say, not much sleep was had the days leading up to surgery. Ashley flew in from Colorado, my sister came in from AZ. I had a full house, lots of stress and was trying to pretend that everything was ok. 

Going back into surgery, they did all of their prep, stuck me a billion times, but all the IV's in they needed. Gave me some meds. I laid in the bed with Victor sitting next to me, I remember every single person that was going to be in the room with me that day coming to my bed and introducing themselves to me. Had no clue who anyone was or what purpose they served, but it was nice to see and hear from everyone. Then lastly the surgeon came in to meet with me. He was still not very convinced that the tumor they were going to take out was the one that was causing my Cushings. I remember after he left, Victor and I were like, WTF just happened. You are going to come in here minutes before surgery to tell me that you aren't 100% sure the surgery you are going to go picking through my head to complete is the cause of my issues? God help us all. I definitely teared up as they were rolling me away, all the thoughts and worries, coming down my face.

Then all of a sudden I was awake. I was alive. There is a LOT I don't remember. I'm pretty sure I was in recovery for a few hours.. I kinda remember some drama with the nurses not wanting to let everyone back to come see me. I know my Aunt Toni was waiting in the waiting room, and just wanted to pop back to give me a hug, but between my husband, sister and best friends, they were not too excited to let more people back to see me. It was great to see everyone right after surgery, even though I was out of it, the amount of support that I had sitting in that waiting room, waiting for me, felt amazing! I am loved. 

I'm pretty sure I was only supposed to stay in recovery for a few hours and then be moved into my own room, but I was in recovery for a LONG TIME before they had a room open for me. Then for some reason they moved me to ICU for a bit. After awhile they finally got me into a room... the doctors came in and said they feel like they got all of the tumor out and oh yeah, sorry about the IV. Apparently during surgery at some point the IV they had in my right arm that was keeping me asleep, the vein burst and the meds starting going into my arm instead of into my vein. No one noticed at first so there seemed to be a lot of meds going into my arm. Obviously they got it under control and fixed it, but that left my right arm pretty unusable, swollen with pretty bad burns. My left arm had my other IV in it hooked up to the machine so it was going to be a rough day. My nose had some holder around it that kept the gauze in place from the dripping. My throat was SO SORE for the next 24 hours from being intubated for 5-6 hours during surgery. Clearly that tube or metal thing they put in your mouth before tore up the roof of my mouth and my throat hurt. 

The first 24 hours were a blur. I couldn't use either of my arms, my throat and mouth hurt so bad. My nose and head were fine. I couldn't really eat, then I was trying to spoon warm broth into me with my left hand... it was blurry. The next day I had a PT come in and work with me on getting movement back in my crazy swollen right hand. She showed me all kinds of things to do to help. It worked well, the swelling starting to go down and before I left the hospital, I could use my fingers again. The scars it left on my arm were going to be another issue, but at least my arm and fingers were working! The following day I got up and was ready to go home. I got dressed in my own clothes, to show I was ready and able to go. Put on my own socks, walked up some stairs with the PT and was ready to go home.

I spent the next 6 weeks at home resting. Lots of love from all my family and friends, flowers, food, company, visits, cards. I have always had such a great village to help me when I need it and they did not disappoint! 

Resting is ALWAYS hard for me to do, BUT I figured if I didn't rest then it would only effect the rest of my life because its all in my head. Or so I thought... actually to be honest with you, a lot of the healing was in my nose rather than my head. The fact that they went up through my nose for surgery was a something that no one really ever told me would be the hardest part of healing. Not being able to smell anything, or taste anything, because I couldn't smell. Having to do a rinse in my nose every day. Dealing with crusties and gross stuff up in my nose.... but like, ALL the way up in my nose. The weekly visits to the nose dr to help clean me out, the stuff he would pull OUT of my nose. I got to watch it all on a screen in the room and it was so cool. It's def not for everyone. Both Victor and Crystal went to appts with me and neither of them were interested in seeing it. But I thought it was so cool to see the camera go up my nose and all of the things that were up there! 

Healing was a slow process, but it was good. Nov and Dec went really fast and I spent a lot of time outside in the sun every morning just soaking in the vitamin D and feeling good with the sun beaming down on me. For me, the Sunlight has so much healing power, I made it a point to soak in as much as I could. I was told to NOT bend over, I couldn't do some really simple things that meant I was putting my head in a weird position. I had to ask for help when I needed it, but again, I had plenty of help which I'm always grateful for. 

Right away a LOT of my Cushings issues started to go away after surgery! It was so nice to feel somewhat normal come January when I was ready to go back to work! Yes, I still had all that weight on that I needed to get off of me, but slowly all of the other symptoms started to go away and I was back to feeling like myself again!