Hello All,

Surgery for me in 1 short week....dealing with a mixture of excited butterflys fluttering and heavy worrying rhinos thumping in my belly. The big thing is coming out of Surgery. I don't usually do too well with Anasthesia. I linger FOREVER between here and there, in pain, nausiated, trying to come out, suffering, ringing in my head, struggling, its AWFUL! I dread it, and it's keeping me up tonight...

Any tips for how to elegantly wake from Surgery? What helps you? Comforts you? Looking for anything to help me coup with what is ahead? Anything that helped you? Any thoughts, techniques or things you discussed with the Anesthesiologist?

Grasping at Straws here, trying to mentally prepare...

Going on week three liquid only have 1 week remaining. I knew it was going to hard but wow

Not really I guess everyone is different. Doctor informed that if haven’t had any in the past you should have the same outcome. You will be very sleepy when you go into recovery

9 hours ago, Navygal said:

Wow guys,

those are great responses. I’m 3 weeks post of going on my fourth. For me waking up in pain post op was dramatic. They had me waiting 20 minutes for my pain pump. I was in agony, so much so before I past out I asked the nurse why she was making me suffer. They didn’t have the pain meds ready for me when I got out of surgery and the anesthesia wore off. Once I got to recovery room ; the next day. I spoke to the charge nurse, the director of nursing, and patient advocates. To me it was traumatic, I was screaming.Make sure you speak to the anesthesiologist and let him know to have your prescription ready once you leave the OR ( operating room)

WOW. That's not dramatic at all to me...completely justified!

My experience: I'm not sure how long after surgery I woke up, but I woke up very groggy and half-lucid (that's typical of me with general anesthesia). I didn't have any nausea. They tell me I spent two hours in the recovery room, an hour longer than they anticipated because my main room wasn't ready yet, and that I was awake for this time, but I don't recall spending that much time in recovery. For me the recovery room was mostly sleep with short, 30-second bouts of wakefulness as the nurses told me something, and then right back to sleep, so the whole thing could have been three minutes or three hours and I wouldn't have known.

The grogginess continued for about five hours...I'd be awake for a short time, and then sleep for 20-30 minutes. I've had more painful surgeries, but I did a poor job of managing the pain initially on this one. I had a pain pump with morphine, but they never told me how often I would be able to hit it. My only experience with morphine in a prior surgery was that they let me have a single dose and cut me off. Here, my pump would work once every ten minutes, but they didn't tell me that, so I was expecting morphine = long time between pumps, hours even, so I was holding out after my first hit for WAY too long; the pain built up to about a 6 before the nurse told me I could use the pump every 10 minutes, and the pain worked up to an 8 or so before I got a handle on it. I'd definitely ask what the plan for pain management is after surgery, and stay on top of it.

About five hours after surgery ended (I was told the timescale later) I was lucid enough to send out texts to people, carry on intelligible conversations with family and nurses, and about an hour after that I was up and walking a bit with a lot of nurse assistance.

Honestly, I dont think you can be elegant. As for me, I only remember a fuzzy outline of my dauggter there and asking for a hug. She said I also menrioned the cat. She sent family a photo of me apparently asleep still and that is all I remember; not going to my room or anything. Oh the joy of a morphine IV, lol.

2 hours ago, Russ D said:

My experience: I'm not sure how long after surgery I woke up, but I woke up very groggy and half-lucid (that's typical of me with general anesthesia). I didn't have any nausea. They tell me I spent two hours in the recovery room, an hour longer than they anticipated because my main room wasn't ready yet, and that I was awake for this time, but I don't recall spending that much time in recovery. For me the recovery room was mostly sleep with short, 30-second bouts of wakefulness as the nurses told me something, and then right back to sleep, so the whole thing could have been three minutes or three hours and I wouldn't have known.

The grogginess continued for about five hours...I'd be awake for a short time, and then sleep for 20-30 minutes. I've had more painful surgeries, but I did a poor job of managing the pain initially on this one. I had a pain pump with morphine, but they never told me how often I would be able to hit it. My only experience with morphine in a prior surgery was that they let me have a single dose and cut me off. Here, my pump would work once every ten minutes, but they didn't tell me that, so I was expecting morphine = long time between pumps, hours even, so I was holding out after my first hit for WAY too long; the pain built up to about a 6 before the nurse told me I could use the pump every 10 minutes, and the pain worked up to an 8 or so before I got a handle on it. I'd definitely ask what the plan for pain management is after surgery, and stay on top of it.

About five hours after surgery ended (I was told the timescale later) I was lucid enough to send out texts to people, carry on intelligible conversations with family and nurses, and about an hour after that I was up and walking a bit with a lot of nurse assistance.

5

Just for clarification - you can press the button on the pain pump as many times and as often as you want / need to. It will only administer the pain medicine at the interval set by the doctor writing the order and the nurse programming the pump. For example, if the pump is set at 10 minutes, you can push and push the button but it will only give you medicine every 10 minutes (or when you push it if it has been longer than 10 minutes since you last pushed it). The amount you receive is much much less than you would get every four hours by IV. By giving smaller doses much more often, the pain can be controlled. I've had both morphine and fentanyl pain pumps over the years and they all work the same. Most of the time it is set at 10 minutes but one time I had it set at 8 minutes.

You can also ask your doctor (or ask the nurse to ask the doctor) to change the amount administered per push or decrease the time between doses. Everything can be adjusted to meet your needs.

Thank you @macadamia that’s an awesome explanation of how it works. 3 more days for me! I have not had a drawn out liquid diet like others. I start mushes tomorrow, clear liquids and bowl prep on Tuesday, anc Surgery on Wednesday! Crazy how they vary pre op. But my surgeon has been doing these over 20 years and says the liver shrinking diet yields inconsistent results... go figure :/

I had mine in a surgery center. They started me on pain meds and anti nausea meds before my surgery. I had no problems waking up. Just a horribly dry mouth. Make sure you take dry mouth spray with you, it really helps. I really didn’t have much pain. My surgery was at 8:00 am and I was out, the same day by 4::00 pm. The surgery center where I had the procedure was amazing, can’t say enough great things about them! Good luck to you! It feels like I had mine just yesterday, time flies!

I was apparently in and out and whined a LOT. My main problem was that I had never had morphine before and it made me violently sick, but it also made me so groggy that they couldn't understand when i told them that I thought out was the morphine making me ill. I had to wait for it to wear off almost completely before I could refuse it and be understood.

Then they gave me hydrocodone, which made me itch like CRAZY.

I finally just refused anything but Tylenol. I'd rather deal with the pain.

On the up side, it's unlikely I'll be part of the opioid epidemic!

My Sleeve to RNY revision is in T - 2 hours and 20 minuets. Arriving at hospital. Please say a prayer for me

I hope to wake up from surgery in the same basic mood I was in when I went to sleep. Happy and relieved to finally get my RNY. I promise to post back how everything was for me. I think that's the more fervent worry,"How are things going to be for me? And you never quite know until you actually,go through those doors.??And then you do know but nobody gets to carry a journal into there.
I do plan to take pens and a small notebook to journal in.

Walk walk walk

Ok, so I’m 4 days out of surgery!!! Sleeve to RNY. Here is how it went:

- surgery was seriously delayed, so I was so thirsty and nervous

-I voiced this to the nursed

- talking to them helped a lot

- they put on a nausea patch, I truly believe this made a HUGE difference relaxing me

- I had a list of questions so I remembered to ask it all

- they gave me calming medicine into IV on way to OR and then I did not care anymore.

- in OR I moved to another table

- I remember them tying down my hands, but once again, I did not care

- I felt heavy in my chest and... lights out!

- woke to beeping sounds, I stayed very still to give my body time to wake

- I prayed thanking God for brining me through and this centered me

-it was hard to breathe so I asked for my CPAP and that helped a lot (they connected oxygen to it)

- once again I stayed still with eyes closed (to minimize room spinning) somehow that helped

- I heard them say I bled a lot, there was a drainage port on my left side and it was spilling over... not cool,but I did not look, I did not want it to make me queezy.

- most pain and discomfort came from a catheter they left in ( I would later find out this was not necessary... stupid nurses left it in and had me walking around it all night!!!! So mad about that. Next day doc was like, why did they leave it in, they could have just called me.. I begged them too but they would not!!!

- they also made me wait till next morning barium swallow before I could drink!!! Grrrr I was super thirsty

- I got some anti clot shots in belly and they redid IV as vein had collapsed. Not pleasant

- I got up to walk a few hours after I woke. Painful I needed help. But I refused morphen as it made me dizzy.

- I walked about 6 times through the night, stopping to rinvr mouth with ice water to swish around. I fought hard for that privilage!! It helped

-walking every 2 hours plus breathing excercises. I put all my might into that as I knew it was my ticket outta there.

- I played gospel songs as I walked the halls

- I think I did well cuz next morning around 9 amthry set me free to go home and recover.

- some hydrocodone onboard and a pillow helped with the hour ride.

- I would latter have to fight for days for a hydrocodone script!! If you can’t get it after you’ve been hacked up, when can you get it??? Crazy!!! T3 does not work that well on me. But that for another post

hope this helps all awaiting this

love and hugs,

Both times I've had surgery, I came out of anesthesia thinking I was mid-presentation. So if you've got a high-pressure job, know that your subconscious might supply content all on its own. I think in recovery most of what happened was me very seriously and repeatedly informing the nurses that in spite of the patch behind my ear, I still felt very nauseous. Then I was relocated to my actual room, threw up a ton of blood in one go (this is actually pretty normal and I felt a lot better after), and after that all I needed was liquid tylenol.

If I said or did anything bonkers, no one enlightened me.

Believe it or not I did not feel anything after surgery they said that I would be drinking small amount of liquid I was asking for more drink when they added the grape juice. For a while I questioned if I had the surgery I saw the marks but no pain or any aftermath. So I guess I was one of the lucky ones. For those who are wanting to cheat and eat some of your old food, do it and just take a bit however if you over do it you will not want that type of food anymore. I was craving fried chicken breast and chopped BBQ. Ate less that a half of the breast and two forks of BBQ and I was done and that was too much so I know my limits and that is something everyone will need to learn and train your brain