Postop loner?

kahakai, find some peace in knowing this: had my surgery a TAH on Friday got home today (stay as long at the castle as they will allow you, I had a choice, and chose and extra night stay)
I feel 100% better than I imagined, I had had a mini tummy tuck last June, and it was the same incision area but NOT the depth of cut and no removal of organs! I imagined this to be much much worse, but it is not!
I am quite able to get in and out of bed easily, just roll up to one side and then lift your self up to sitting position. if you have a stool to elevate your feet it helps getting back into bed to have your feet elevated, that works with the hospital bed too, there is a rung that pulls out to make a step, just ask one of the first nurses if any lower rungs pull out.(this took me two days before someone told me about it!)
If you have someone that can do laundry, make your bed and change your sheets once a week, that would be awesome in addition to basic house cleaning.
I am so happily surprised to be feeling this good, and the surgery site looks beautiful, it had taken my tummy tuck months of surgical silicon applied daily to make it very faint, and it was and STILL is! I was stapled and the nurse removed the staples right before I left this morning. It looks super good! No bloody no red scar just beautiful! So much so, I can see the "Energizer Bunny" that I am overdoing too much too soon, because under that beautiful surgery site, is 100's of internal stitches that I can't see and can barely feel! I can see that it would be easy to fool ones self into a full day of shopping or some other foolishness! So, I am trying to not be fooled!
I feel already, even though some swelling has set in, SOOO much better than the weeks just prior to surgery! when I woke up my tummy was SO flat!
I have the surgical garment on that I used after the tuck which should help to keep the swelling down. I will continue wearing it for several weeks. i also bought Arnica gel and some homeopathic Montana Arnica to take, it helps to reduce inflamation and swelling, so I am going to start tomorrow and apply it 3 times a day, it is in my bedside refrigerator keeping cool!
I have zero appetite and ate only about half a container and half a dish or oatmeal for breakfast in the castle. a little soup for lunch and dinner, the rest of the stuff was just not appealiing to me, so if you have yogurts, easy soups some nice crackers (high fiber of course) and I would go for cranberry juice if it is something you enjoy, I am being treated for a possible bladder infection, from the catheter. I guess it is common with a catheter so they treat you, and I figure yogurt is always a good thing after antibiotic treatments. some kind of frozen juice bars or low cal low fat frozen fudge bars are good too, because you have to have some kind of food when they switch you off the pain med pump and put you on pills for pain.
i am just very pleased how good I can get around! I hope you willl have the same results. I did have lots of fibroids and they were according to my dr, very big, i did not have any other bladder or rectum repair work done and I think those add to the recovery discomforts.

Plutonian

There have been many single women who have needed to recover alone. It is doable.

Here are some things that you might want to consider.

-Make sure your Dr knows you will be going home alone. He may chose to keep you in the castle an extra day.

-make sure your phone is easily accessible in case you do have an emergency and need to call for help.

-have frozen microwavable meals in the freezer that you can easily prepare and throw the containers away...use paper products to eat with and out of.

-bending over can cause pain. There is also the issue of your cats getting under your feet and causing you to lose your balance (which is a little precarious while on pain meds) and fall (which can cause internal harm). You will also want to keep the cats away from your incision while healing to avoid infection and pain (if they decide to cuddle on your tummy) Is there someone who could watch your cats for you? or, can you isolate them in another room for a few days?

My first days home all I did was sleep walk drink alot of water and eat a little food. Oh, and go to the bathroom I watched a little tv, but nothing with a deep plot, nothing sad.

I personally prefer sleeping in my own home and on my own bed at night. I didn't really want friends to be around all the time to watch me Is there someone who could just come by or call you to check on you once or twice a day?

I'm not trying to talk you out of staying with a friend. You know how close you are and how comfortable you will be staying with him. I just wanted you to know that recovering alone is not unheard of

s and Best Wishes,
Kay

ktys, thanks so much for the info. I'm hoping I have everything I"ll need-I went shopping yesterday........but we know how the best laid plans go!!!!! For the next few days I'm going to spend cleaning the house and cooking meals to freeze. Its a way to keep my mind busy as I can't seem to do anything but worry. I'm scared I'll have one of those "I've fallen and can't get up" moments! I know I'm just over thinking this but the unknown is scarey. And I have to thank all of you girls for being there for me when I needed it. 5 days and counting

hi plutonian,

i too live alone and even though i have friends i can call on i knew i would have to deal with the majority of recovery myself. i had a friend stay with me about 2 days after i got home from the hospital. before going in i prepared a lot of meals, so i could heat and eat which doesn't need much standing time and easy to eat things for breakfast like instant oatmeal. because i have an up and down stairs and was worried about the stairs i got a hot plate and moved my coffee maker upstairs so i could get going in the a.m. without negotiating the stairs. most important, a phone within reach in case of emergency. i also did a lot of cleaning so it wouldn't matter if nothing got done for a couple of weeks.

it turned out that the hardest thing during recovery was getting in and out of bed, thank goodness my two day caretaker knew that one.

i was fortunate that my recovery went smoothly. my one goal daily was to take a little walk. my first walks were about the length of a long driveway and boy was i shaky by the time i got back inside. i gradually increased time to about a 30 minute walk by the time i went back to work at 6 weeks. i definitely couldn't drive for the first couple of weeks....and the smallest outings had to be short. it's amazing how a 5 minute trip to the market can wear you out and i didn't even have to drive! even after the doctor okayed driving i took it easy. just walking around shopping would knock me out for a couple of hours.

i have two cats and they have an always full bowl of dry food and i give them a small can of food once a day..you know i don't know how i handled that...i know the cans were on the counter so i must have done the bending to put it down for them. i also can't remember how i handled the cat box, but it must have been the same.

my mom called daily to check on me. and several friends called or e-mailed.

it can be done but i think it depends on the person and how well they recover..maybe part of it was i felt had prepared the best i could and would figure out any hurdles as they came up.

best wishes for an uneventful recovery

Thanks everyone. Kahakai, glad you asked about my surgery date because I had it entered wrong. It is, in fact, this Monday, Aug. 13, like yours. I haven't had all that much time to prepare, because this surgery is being prompted by an unexpected finding at a July 5 gynecologist visit that was confirmed by a second ultrasound on July 20th.

I have decided to stay with my family member, which is the direction suggested by most people's replies, in my mind. I might have managed it safely on my own if I'd gotten started sooner but there is too much to be done at this point. I'd be breaking the rules right and left because I hadn't laid the proper groundwork. I'll stay there through the period of maximum risk for hemorrhage, rupture, etc., according to whatever the surgeon says. I'm guessing that's going to be about two weeks after discharge, based on comments here and other readings.

P- Great decision, now I will give you something to think about.... I am now 6 days post op from a TAH. I feel wonderful! took a pain pill the night I got home to help me sleep did not need it for pain...
I am able to get up and around just fine! I am resting and not driving and only walking thru the house, no stairs, don't have any. cooked dinner tonight. Taking liquid vitamin B complex, and some other healthy things for me.

I had a really busy day today, doing some work at my hospital table on my computers, real estate stuff. My head is clearing and I am starting to remember what I was and am doing now.

At any rate, since I am 55, you may just get lucky and only need to stay with friends for a week. I could definately take care of me and my cat by myself now.
The hard part and the scarey part is how easy it is to do damage by what appears to be doing not much.... I am trying to be really careful!

Thanks ktys. I am almost exactly your age, 54, and it is very encouraging to hear you're doing so well only six days later. So much so that it once again tempts me to wonder, why am I going through all this relocation hassle (and putting my cats through it)?

	Quote:
Originally Posted by ktys The hard part and the scarey part is how easy it is to do damage by what appears to be doing not much....

That's why.

Best wishes for continued speedy recuperation.

I had my mom to stay with after the TSH - and my kitties stayed at a wonderful cats-only kennel that I used to work at!

One other thing I was going to suggest - but you are staying with a family member now - is that hospitals usually have a social worker, and they might have access to help you can have at home.

Re: Cats - I had my surgery on May 22 (Tuesday), came home to my own place on May 31, with cats in tow (Mom carried the carrier, as they total about 30 lbs!!!). By then I could squat down easily to clean the litter box (which I had left TOTALLY clean and a little over-full with litter before I left - and had STOCKED UP on litter too!).

The cats never got underfoot...maybe that is just the way these two are, but I never had trouble.

Good luck! Sounds like you have a plan.

go thru the relocation JUST in CASE you are not this lucky!!!!! The cats will be SO happy to see you even after a few days, they will forgive you.

If you go to your friend's place and really really rest the first four or five days and feel this good, the kitties can come home with you! And you will all be very happy, just remember to NOT pick them up and don't allow them to sneak up and jump on your tummy!

I pray that you will be this lucky, I think it was a combination of great surgeon, no complications, a previous mini tummy tuck (using the same scar) and I just barely moved, in the hospital I only walked one time around the floor on saturday, and twice on sunday, I mostly did not move and wore a compression garment and ice! I kept ice on and still am doing so.
Prior to going in I ate very healthy, took plenty of vitamins and drank plenty of water, I fasted on water only the day prior to surgery, although I could have eaten a regular diet up to midnight the night before, I did it my way.
I got lots and lots of kitty love just prior to going in to the castle and I am sure that is very healing!
Good luck, I will be praying for YOUR miracle!

Thanks... My cats unfortunately are old (12 and 16). I don't really care whether they forgive me so much as I care whether they get so stressed out that it pushes one or both of them into kidney failure or some such thing.

Animals, like people, are most vulnerable when very young or very old. When I had a myomectomy years ago and went through a similar process, I lost a 2-year-old purebred cat to feline infectious peritonitis—widely considered a stress-triggered disease—a few months later. Hard to get that out of my mind.

I had arranged with my next door neighbor to care for them while I was in the hospital and was going to pick them up (no, not literally) on the way home, but my family member objected to that plan, so I have to relocate them (and all of their considerable paraphernalia) tomorrow.

They are in decent shape as of now, but the older one drinks a lot more than he used to, and the health of a 16-year-old feline is almost by definition precarious. And trips to the vet with a 15-lb cat in a carrier aren't going to be on my list of allowed activities any time soon. :-)

Yes, I will definitely have to guard against tummy transits by the cats. They consider my belly a bridge to the other side of the bed. :-D