The surgery was a success, and we're now home trying to recuperate. It wasn't as smooth as I'd expected, but at least it worked. Thank you so much to everyone who kept us in your prayers and thoughts. Thank you for the facebook messages and phone calls. We're so lucky to have such caring family and friends. So here's the update:
Surgery Day
On Wednesday, January 5th K took me to St. Vincent's Women's Hospital to have a transabdominal cerclage. We arrived at 6:30am, and Dr. Sumners was already in a surgery. He finished the other surgery early, and my nurse started rushing with me so that he could get started on me early. She put my IV in (not the smoothest IV I've ever had) and off we went to get the spinal. The anesthesiologist took about 5 minutes to get my spinal in the right place and had to change out the needle once. It was not fun, but luckily I was already pretty numb. Then they laid me back, and Dr Sumners and another surgeon, Dr. Deaton, began the procedure. They decided to cut me vertically instead of horizontally. I'm not clear on why. I would think because of my size, but he said more than once because of my developed abdominal muscles. Was he joking?? Anyway, Dr. Sumners said that the horizontal cut is easier to recover from, but he couldn't risk getting in artery and vein trouble by doing the horizontal cut. So, I was 100% conscious as they started cutting on me vertically. I couldn't feel any pain, but I could definitely feel them both tugging on me. The surgery lasted about an hour, and it seemed to me to be a very physcial surgery. Dr. Deaton lifted my uterus and triplets out, and Dr. Sumners, sewed the top of the cervix shut. I felt it all. I think it was about this point in time that I became aware of an observer in the room. At first I assumed it was a resident or another professional of some sort. I didn't become annoyed until she started talking... a lot. "Oh thank you so much for allowing me to come back here and observe this surgery. This is so fascinating. blah blah blah. Oh, what's that? What are you doing now?" Maybe she didn't realize I was conscious. Then once the cerclage was in place, Dr. Sumners and Deaton started to sew me back up. Once Dr. Sumners got it started with Dr. Deaton, Dr. Sumners told me it went well and left. At which point, the observer stepped closer to me, and I saw her face. What sounded like a dingy 20 year old, was really a 50 year old with a minnie mouse voice. I don't know if that was worse or better. Anyway, I just shut my eyes as Dr. Deaton sewed me up, and the observer-turned-assistant cut the thread each time he reached the end. At one point Dr. Deaton had to scold her, "I need your full attention. Please cut this. You can't be paying attention to what the nurses are doing over there." She said, "Oops, sorry." Then he explained the staples to her and how she was going to do it. I heard her press the staple gun for the first time, and then I heard her say, "Uh-oh! Missed." Dr. Deaton said, "Yeah, you do actually have to be touching the skin for it to work." At some other point she said Oops! again. I don't even know why. That was when I started getting mad.
K sat with me in recovery for about an hour, 9:30-10:30am. Then I was moved to a room, and my mom and dad and Kristin Herrmann came back too. Thanks Kristin!! The private rooms were very nice and large. They told me to get something light on my stomach, and I was eager to do this because anesthesia and pain meds always make me vomit. I chose red jello. Soon my spinal started to wear off and my uterus was contracting very regularly. Also, the incision and the spinal site on my back started to hurt. I was in tremendous pain. The nurse just kept trying to calm me by explaining that the spinal was wearing off, so yes, I would be feeling some pain. I was completely miserable. I kept saying, "This is bullshit! How can I be in the hospital and in this much pain? Can't they give me something?" On the other hand, I was scared to take anything because vomiting would have been even more painful with my abdomen incision. The nurse did give me something to make my uterus stop contracting, which helped eventually, but it seemed to take a while to kick in. Still, no pain relief. The nurse said she was waiting for the residents to come back around, and that she'd let them know about my pain. Probably from the spinal anesthesia, nausea started to set in. I told K I was about to puke, and she grabbed a bucket, but unfortunately, she was just a second too slow. A huge red tidal wave of projectile vomit went straight in her face. I mean a HUGE red tidal wave. Better than a scene from a movie. She did jump back so the tidal wave missed her eyes and most of her hair, but it did hit her mouth, neck and bottom half of her hair. I ruined her sweater and jeans. Luckily for me, she started laughing. If I were her, I probably would've started puking.
About 1:30, the nurse ran into our room and said, "There's been a little mix-up. The resident assumed the anesthesiologist gave you recovery pain meds with the spinal, but he did not. We've ordered your pain medicine and it will be here soon. I'm so sorry." I'm guessing that the anesthesiologist didn't give me the additional medicine because he was having so much trouble with the actual spinal. An hour later the pain meds came. In that hour wait, the anesthesiologist came in and chipperly said, "How ya doin?" I yelled back, "I'm miserable!" He said, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." and quickly left. haha! So from 10:30-2:30 I had no pain medication.
I may sound like a drama queen or high maintenance, and I can be. Anyone who has a blog must have a dramatic flair, however, anyone who knows me knows that I don't complain about care or service. If someone gave me a horrible hair cut, I say I love it. If a server brings me the wrong dinner, I say I love it. K is always getting mad at me for being so accommodating. So please know, that for me to tell someone "I am miserable!" was not being overly dramatic. I was truly at my wits' end. I can laugh about it now. In fact, I laugh the most when I think about how I want to call my knee surgeon, Dr. Klootwyk, to see if he might be capable of delivering triplets at Methodist Sports Medicine. His hospital runs much, much, much tighter than this. Ok, just a joke.
Once the pain meds were in my system with some anti-nausea medicine, I felt so much better. We made it through the Wednesday and Thursday without incident. They moved me from a IV pain med to a pill. I was very scared about this, because in the past, I haven't been able to handle any pain pills. Of course, I told them what I knew I couldn't tolerate. They chose to give me Norco. It worked amazingly, and I was able to tolerate it. I got up to shower on Friday, and took my bandages off for the first time. When I saw those jagged staples going every which way and not flush to my skin, I started to cry. I was so mad all over again about that lady in the OR learning how to do staples on me. The nurse took a look at them for me and tried to reassure me that they look normal. I'm still not sure.
While a bunch of stupid things happened in the hospital, I'm still glad we did the surgery, and we feel confident with Dr. Sumners. It's really good that I now know what to expect in the c-section when the triplets are born. The spinal and surgery aren't that scary. Now I know I need to be a bit more assertive too.
So now we're home. K continues to be a machine, just as she has been for the last 3 months. She makes all of our meals, cuts up fruits and veggies for snacks, cleans, takes care of 3 dogs that she never wanted, gets up at 6am to feed dogs, takes out the trash, takes out the recycling, shovels snow, cleans snow off cars, waits on me hand and foot, helps me get dressed, helps me shower, helps me pee, arranges my pillows, wakes up when I wake up, manages my diet, and constantly reassures me about my every doubt. She does all of this while working 70 hrs a week and working on her MBA. This morning she got up at 5:30 to write a paper that was due by 10am. She may be more worn out than me. My parents are a huge help too. My dad takes care of the dogs and snow blowing too, and my mom gets our groceries and cooks us dinner a few nights a week. All three of them were at the hospital with me most of the time. I am so lucky to have such a great family.
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