My hospital stay wasn't too bad except for the over-night nurse that kept unplugging me and getting wires mixed up. At one point she came in and told me the monitoring people told her I was dead (jokingly I hope). I spent the night with wires and hoses criss-crossed all over me. They gave me breakfast of chicken broth, tea and crystal light on Thursday morning before going home. That was more breakfast than I expected!! The rest of the nurses etc were great!

I developed lots of abdominal cramps and called on Friday night (surgery was on a Wendsday). The on call doctor (not my surgeon) said to call back Saturday AM if it did not go away. I was up all night Friday night and called the answering service Saturday AM. No return call so I called back an hour later; no return call. It was a holiday weekend. My wife took me to the ER where I had blood tests along with x-ray and cat scan. They could not find anything and attempted to call the surgeon's on call physician. I was released after 5 hours. The morphine they injected eased the pain. I never did find out what caused it.

The following Monday I got an email from the surgeon's office saying that these kind of pains happen "especially after Thanksgiving". Thanksgiving??? The thanksgiving that was 24 hours after my surgery that I slept through after my breakfast of tea, crystal light and chicken broth. (My family had their Thanksgiving at relative's house). Does anybody think the pain may be from the surgery and not from the thanksgiving dinner of tea, crystal light and chicken broth?

I'm pretty sure the abdominal cramping you experienced was simply internal gas from the surgery. Some of us experience it as a pain in the left shoulder area.

Didn't they send you home with liquid pain medication? My liquid pain meds were so strong I immediately began cutting them in half and after two days gave them up altogether.

It DOES get better, believe me--at two weeks and one day it was like someone drew a line in the sand I felt so terrific! (And at five weeks and one day I totally forgot I had surgery!!). Hang in there...

Thanks. You are right! Im am know at day 15 and I have no pain. Yes, I had the liquid pain medicine. In fact, I have half of the bottle left. I also had the shoulder pain...but everything is good now. Thanks for the advice