Post-op Post

1. I think I have finally deflated. Well, at least mostly. I can't tell if the remainder is residual carbon dioxide or residual flab.


2. My post-op, post-chemo appetite is pretty much back to normal. No Yankee Doodles. No Yankee Doodle cravings, even. And I'm no longer ravenous all the livelong day. I hope this bodes well for the residual flab.


3. Drawstring pants are my life. My four incisions are strategically placed to nix any chance of wearing a normal waistband (belly button), a low-rise waistband (hips), or a super-low-rise waistband (bikini line). Not that I'd be caught dead in super-low-rise pants, mind you.


4. If I had to dress like a functioning member of society instead of a slug-butt, empire-waist dresses would be my life.


5. I can, once again, bend over. No more grand pliés whenever something slips out of my hands.


6. I recently noticed that my incisions aren't quite symmetrical, and this kind of bugs me. I guess it won't matter if the scars are tiny or camouflaged, but I was kind of expecting my bottom incision to be centered along my belly button. (It isn't.) And I figured the two side scars would be at the same exact latitude. (They're not.) So instead of a nice, neat parallelogram, I'll be walking around with a quadrilateral for the rest of my life.


7. I moved back to the couch last night. I started out here because I couldn't get in or out of bed without help, so I slept propped up on a bunch of pillows. I had moved back to the bed a couple of nights ago, but I haven't been able to sleep on my side yet, and I was waking up with lower-back pain as a result. I don't really have lower-front pain anymore, so I don't see any reason to encourage my back to act up.


8. My steri-strips are hanging on. Until Monday, they were covered with gauze and some kind of cellophane-type adhesive bandage that looked like a cross between a clear mailing label and a small piece of Saran wrap. My money is on the belly-button steri-strips to fall off first.


9. I didn't notice this until the Saran-like bandage came off, but I've got four pinprick punctures or incisions around my belly button. (There may also be one or two others under the steri-strips.) It looks like a couple of vampires paid me a visit during the surgery. That or aliens.


10. This really was a breeze, pain-wise. I didn't even fill the prescription for Tylenol with codeine, and I didn't dip into the Vicodin I have lying around from one of the other surgeries. I took a couple of doses of Extra-strength Tylenol and one Aleve on the day of the surgery, but I haven't needed anything since. Except maybe ice cream.