Well, the surgery went well, though not as well as they had expected. The mesh from the original repair had detached, got all goo-ed up in balls and then adhered to my muscles. So they had to remove that as well as some scar tissue and adhesions. In addition, he put in a super-large piece of mesh in the hopes that the hernia will not reoccur (seems every time it reoccurs, the likelyhood of another reoccurence is higher). I ended up having to spend a night in the hospital but yay for that as the dilauded was fabulous. The first 8 or so hours, I could barely move at all, including drawing a breath and coughing. And then my bladder seized up and I couldn't go to the bathroom. They finally gave me something for that as I couldn't be released until I pee'd.
It's been a week now and I'm still in quite a bit of pain, so I'm not doing much other than laying around, sleeping, watching TV and movies and sleeping some more. Phone calls are welcome!
In other news, Brian had told me right before surgery that they thought he had mouth cancer again (he chews tobacco, a nasty habit that I hope he quits very very soon). He got the biopsy results on Tuesday and they were good.
Unfortunately, that wasn't my only piece of bad news. About two months ago, my dad was in the hospital because he had what they thought was a bleeding ulcer which caused so much blood loss that it strained his heart (making them think he had a heart attack) and needed 2 transfusions to correct. By the time they viewed the ulcer in an endoscope, it had stopped bleeding so they scheduled a follow-up scope in 8 weeks (Tuesday) to make sure it hadn't started bleeding again.
So, we all just thought he was going in for a routine test. Not so much. The doctor came out and told my mom that they took quite a number of biopsies but that he was pretty sure it was cancer (and really, if they weren't really sure, they wouldn't tell you anything like this until the biopsy results came in) but they would know for sure after the biopsy. The mass is 8 CM which is very large. They did do a CT scan and didn't find any other masses in important organs so that was the good news. For now, we're just all in shock and hoping for the best though not really expecting it. I really can't even think about it much because I just, well, I just can't.
That's all for now. Peace out.
