Surgery Success

I woke up yesterday morning a bundle full of nerves, around 6:30. Stumbled out of bed and went into the guest room to check on the munckin's new kitten, played with him for a little while since she's at her grandpa's house for the remainder of this week, then shuffled down to the garage to procure a large piece of plywood to set at the top of the stairs so that kitten can run around the upstairs and not make contact with my stepdad's crotchety old cat. The older cat can't jump very well anymore, and the kitten is still too small to make it, so there's no risk of a tiff while the humanz iz away.

It turns out that when I'm nervous, I clean. And ramble on about stupid things. First off, my last surgery left me nauseous to the point of involuntary retching and more unpleasant things. So when the anesthesiologist at the big hospital looked at my chart, he noticed that I do not react well to waking up post-op. He offered me a spinal, but I told him that I'm wary about a spinal because epidurals only work on the left side of my body. He said spinals are different, but that it was fine; they have all kinds of new drugs to kill the nausea. I still have the scopolamine patch behind my ear, and the anesthesia aide gave me a shot of intravenous benadryl. It. Worked. Beauty.

I remember all of the pre-op waiting; the nurse was very good with the lidocaine to numb my hand before the IV went in. The doctor and a team of 3 residents, plus two OR nurses to assist, and I met all of them. Anyway, they wheeled me into the OR and helped me scoot onto a teeny-tiny table with what felt like leg-hammocks. They strapped leg massagers on, stuck electrodes all over me (I don't know why I had a big streak of iodine on the outside of my left thigh, but whatever. The anesthesia aide held a mask over my mouth and told me to breathe normally; I didn't even get to count backwards from ten; I was just out. When I woke up, I was in post-op on my right side (just the way I like to sleep. Seriously.) I looked around, didn't see anyone, noticed a distinct lack of nausea and decided to go back to sleep. I guess the doctor went out and told Hubs that the procedure was a success, and that one of the nurses would come get him when I had woken up, because they wanted to let me sleep.

After Hubs came in, the doctor showed us pictures of my uterus, which didn't make much sense to me at the time, so I just kind of smiled and nodded. What she DID tell me was that it looked as though I had been shedding scar tissue on my own, and that the remaining tissue pretty much came away when they filled my uterus with saline. She said she would send the pictures to the IVF clinic right away, and that she doesn't foresee any more delays being needed in this surrogacy cycle. There's no balloon or IUD in my uterus right now, so I guess she's really, really confident. Hopefully the doctor at the IVF clinic agrees.

When I got home, the kitten decided he couldn't bear to be without me, so he figured out how to climb up onto my bed so he could spend the greater part of the night alternately bathing himself and snuggling either tight up against me or ON me while he bathed, then fell asleep. I sincerely hope he does the same with the munchkin, or she's gonna be a very sad girl.