Friday, December 16, 2011

Finally, rock-free

I'm home, and happy (and very thankful) to report that I am now stone-free.  Actually, I got to bring my stones home :)
The surgery went really well, and there were no complications, my k-pouch is doing great.
I got to the Cleveland Clinic at 11am and surgery was around 2pm.  Two sticks to get the IV started and when I got into the OR and the anesthesiologist started to push the anesthesia it burned like crazy so they knew that one was going to blow too, they said they'd start another once I was asleep.  That was a blessing because I woke up with two other IVs and two additional holes with bruises from other attempts.  I don't care because I wasn't awake to feel it!
Surgery took about 2 hours, but Dr Monga (who is AWESOME!) was able to remove 4 stones without breaking them up.  Three are about the size of marbles and the 4th about the size of a BB.  The 5th stone was too big to pull out so they broke it up, it was also attached to a staple at the edge of the valve of my pouch.  Doc said they had to pull the staple out with the stone fragments but because my pouch is mature there shouldn't be any issues.  The stone they broke apart was sent to pathology and hopefully in a few days I'll know what they are made of.  No additional incisions were made but I did spend the night in the hospital.
Here are a couple of pics.  The 1st one was taken during the surgery by the doc of the big stone that was stuck to a staple by my valve.  The 2nd pic is the 4 stones I got to take home.



I woke up with a FOLEY catheter in my k-pouch! and it was inside of an ostomy bag which was really strange but their little arrangement as a constant drain did work.
For dinner I was allowed to eat "anything" so the hospital kindly brought a salad, mashed potatoes and diced peaches. LOL.  On a good day I wouldn't eat all three of those in one sitting, much less with a tiny little foley cath emptying my pouch!  I ate some pudding for dinner, which was perfect because you're never hungry after surgery anyways.
The constant drain came out the day after surgery and they held me 4 additional hours so I could intubate a couple of times on my own to make sure there were no issues.  My stoma was pretty swollen at first, but he's almost back to normal now.
I'm still pretty sore all over and my stoma is sore, he's also got two white stripes running down, looks like a layer of mucosa was scraped off somehow.  I'm sure he'll heal in time.
I'm glad its over, really really glad my k-pouch is fine, and glad to be stone-free.