So it turns out I'm a terrible patient.
Less than a week after surgery, I'm bored out of my ever-loving mind. I've spent days cooped up in the recliner, impossibly happy when I was able to move to the bed for a while. I went for my first post-op visit this morning. Bandage free, though still covered in surgical tape, I was able to get my first shower in days.
Really, I shouldn't be so delighted by Dial soap.
I'm being good—doing everything my surgeon and my nurses said to do and not to do. I'm also eating anything that comes within five feet of my gullet. Stress and boredom are the worst possible triggers for a compulsive eater.
The first few hours in the Perocet coma were kind of enjoyable. There was a reason to rest and let my mind wander. But eventually I started to sleep in thirty second spurts, interrupted by two minutes of groggy lucidity that would fall straight away into resumption of the dream I'd just left a few moments before. For two days, I witnessed both what was going on around me and what was in my head, simultaneously. All from the padded cell of my recliner.
I have watched a lot of movies and television. I couldn't read much, unable to focus on the type and the words. It feels in part like I've wasted time that could've been used productively on anything else. But I know my body needed the time to rest and heal from the assault I just paid my surgeon a few thousand dollars to perform.
I'm still swollen and puffy, and my thighs don't really look any smaller today than they did a week ago. I know she removed about 600 grams of flesh (just over a pound for the demons, I suppose) in four big patches. My nurses assure me it will all look different very soon. But all of those nagging worries and insecurities started to creep in again, around the haze of anesthesia, to taunt me with their whispers of "mistake" and "useless" and "what the hell did you do?"
It's made me gripey and agitated and irritable, to say the least. Add the boredom and frustration of being still, and I'm a bit of a bear right now. Special thanks goes to DH and the boys for being so sweet and caring through all of this. I have wanted for nothing, except maybe a cookie for the fat girl.
Having been through this a couple of times, I know I'll be delighted in a few weeks, completely enthralled by the genius of my plastic surgeon. Once the swelling subsides and the drain tubes are gone, I'll be ecstatic that I made the choice to do this, again. But the waiting is killing me.
Comments