Day 8 - Post Surgery

8 Days Post Surgery and Before

The pictures above were taken this morning after I got up and showered. If you look closely at the pictures you can see the outline from the foam pad on my stomach, and the seams from the garmet on my sides...remember, this is after I've been up for a while AND taken a shower. Did I mention I hate the garmet? I'm liking how everything is looking so far.

I see quite a difference already, which is good! I'm a little paranoid that he didn't remove quite enough from the area right below my belly button, but obviously have to wait and see how things look in a few weeks. I want to bring it up to him when I see him next week though, just to see what he thinks.

The rest of my first week post surgery was pretty un-eventful. I had my stitches out 4 days after surgery. I have some marks left over from the band-aids I was using to cover the stitches. Those look worse than the actual incisions! I have a bad feeling I'm going to have some scarring from a couple of those marks, but feel that the incisions will be barely noticible rather quickly.

I stopped taking the vicodin around the 3rd day after surgery and took some tylenol, but didn't see any advantage to that, so I stopped taking that as well. The 3rd and 4th days after surgery I had nausea and just felt gross. I slept a lot and then felt even more gross. I think I had gotten dehydrated and vicodin makes me constipated, so I drank lots of fluid and about a day after I quit the vicodin I started to feel better and have felt fine ever since.

I went back to work 1 week after my surgery (yesterday). I made it through my full 9 hour day which I was proud of. It was a little hard b/c I sit a lot and this stupid garmet is very uncomfortable for sitting upright. It feels better if I can lean back in my chair, which is what I did as much as I could. I was told my maximum level of swelling will be around this time and that it should only get better from here. Let's hope the Dr. is right!

I feel more uncomfortable in the garmet from the swelling/bruising some days more than others. It is very annoying when I have a bad day because it can be VERY uncomfortable. Today I had a rough day at work. I had to drive back and forth to another site which is about an hour away (each way) and then sit (upright) in a meeting for a couple hours. This made for a very uncomfortable afternoon. I feel like some parts of the garment dig in at times and is very uncomfortable w/ my bruising. When I got home from work today, I took the garmet off to look at my skin, and it looked very puffy on the small of my back. I'm also quite itchy. Most of the itching is centered around the seams on the garmet, but I am itchy in other areas too. Can you tell that the garmet has BY FAR been the worst part of this experience to date? ugh...

Other than this stupid garmet, I feel good and wish I had permission to start doing more activities. I'm bummed about missing this much time at the gym! I mowed the lawn this weekend (riding mower) with no troubles and can't wait to start doing more. We'll see what I can get permission for when I talk to the Dr. next week.