Surgery, Part 3

On day 3 of recovery, Thursday, I wake early again to the nurse taking my vitals and my clear fluids breakfast shows up, its jello, coffee, apple juice and broth again. Tracy joins me for the morning, but has to leave around lunch to head back to work for the rest of the day. I eat, or what I should say drink my lunch….more of the same. Shortly after lunch, while I’m reading I feel a pain in my stomach, one I’m now very familiar with, I call for my nurse and ask for a bowl or barf bag, anything will do. I don’t know exactly how I remember these time, but at 2 p.m. I start getting sick, and I mean sick!!! The nurse rushes in with a bigger bowl and I fill it, I continue to get sick for, no word of a lie, until 7 p.m. At one point I yell to the nurse, ” I think I’m going to blow my staples! “. She tries to reassure me that she has spoken to the doctor and that won’t happen. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced so much pain and fear in my life, at that point anyway. I want to give a shout out here to my buddy Jay who showed up while this was all going down, and didn’t make fun of me, we tend to do that to each other when either one of us is in pain. I think he came back the next night and told me I had looked like shit, and decided to go easy on me, just this once.

I was violently ill one last time just before 7 p.m. and then just as quickly as this spell came on, it just disappeared, I apologised to the daytime nurse before she left and thanked her for all the help. The nighttime nurse sure lucked out as I finished just when she started. I also gave a big sorry to my roommate, who had to listen to that for 5 hours….it was awful. Almost as bad, I was know taken back off food, I asked for some Garvol early and retired early that night.

The next morning the Doctor came to see me, she figured that I had eaten a little to fast and that when the intestines are operated on they sometimes become lazy and don’t work as hard, the scarring tissue also could’ve found themselves and sealed like Velcro. A problem I still deal with now. So on the Friday I rested and was given ice chips at dinner and told, not too many and not too fast, I was not a happy guy. Saturday morning comes and Tracy comes to visit and helps lifts my spirits, the nurse comes and listens to my abdomen quite frequently, listening for gurgling and as the day goes on she is encouraged from what she hears. I’m allowed some ginger ale and popsicles, as long as I take it easy. It’s hard to describe how hungry I was at this time, I’ve had no real food since Monday night and it’s now Saturday evening, I’m grouchy, but remind myself that I’m very lucky to be able to receive this type of care. At this time on Saturday night, hungry and in pain I really begin to take stock of my life, I’ve wasted so much time thinking, procrastinating about all the things I what to do and experience. I take out my journal again and start not a bucket list, but a life goals list….important stuff. Tonight as I write this I question myself, Have I done anything yet? Or have I just fallen back into the same old grind….Inside my head is a battle it’s the old safe, doing the right thing Steve vs I guess what you could Cancer Steve, who wants to drastically change, live life on the fly. I can’t wait until Covid ends, then we’ll see which Steve wins…….