One Less Lobe – Surgery Update

I survived my surgery and now I have returned home! I probably should have updated sooner, but honestly, the past week and a half flew by. A lot of it blurred past – a mix of pain meds (some of which I’m still on) and pain and walking and just surviving minute to minute – so I didn’t have time to do any updating. But now I’ll update on surgery and the update on my path report will come soon.

Surgery Day

The day before surgery, we went to Cleveland and did a bunch of pre-op testing, met with anesthesiology and one of Dr. Raymond’s residents, and finished up all the final things like that. The morning of surgery, we headed to the surgery center. They prepped me, asked me a bunch of questions, and then moved me to the operating room, where they hooked me all up to the IV, monitor, etc. Finally, they gave me some anesthetic, and I took a last few deep breaths with all five lobes and drifted off. The rest of the surgery was easy for me!

I don’t remember too much after that for a while. I hold vague memories of waking up in the PACU, my parents coming in and saying hi, and me asking how it went (they told me they got clean margins). Mostly I remember being in pain and getting more pain meds. They gave me a pain pump so that I could push the button every so often, but they were also giving me additional pain meds as well. Then the first thing I clearly remember is being moved up to the room. When we got there, they had these new beds in the room and had to transfer me from the OR bed to the new floor bed and it was excruciatingly painful. It had been time to get more pain meds before they moved me and I had opted to wait until I was on the floor to get those, but wished I hadn’t made that choice once they moved me!

During that first night, my pain caused shortness of breath and my oxygen levels dropped, so they put me onto oxygen again (they took me off when I left the PACU). I remember pushing the button for the pain meds a lot and the little sleep I got being interrupted because my breathing messed up or my alarm sounded or whatever. By late the next morning, though, I was breathing better and back off the oxygen and they were ready to get me up to the chair!

A Little Routine

I sat up in the chair a little and had some breakfast, my first food in over 24 hours! My routine became established: a short walk, eating, walking to the bathroom, using a little trumpet to clear my lungs, napping, and moving from the chair to the bed and back. Each hour I became stronger and could walk further – first I walked just a few feet to the chair, then out into the hallway, then I walked down the hallway, then finally the whole hallway and before I knew it, I could walk a whole lap!

I encountered a few setbacks. Specifically, my pain remained difficult to get under control. As a result, my breathing was sometimes painful and difficult. There were times I felt like something was stuck in my chest that I needed to cough it up. I also experienced a burning pain that spread from the chest tubes and incisions around my ribs and the pain meds failed to help.

But I continued to progress, and they removed first one, then the other chest tube. By this time, I was free of the chest tubes, and oxygen, and even though I had an IV in my arm, they unhooked it, so I was free to walk and it felt good! The pain continued to be difficult to get under control, but when we thought everything was going well, they released me, but I had to stay in Cleveland.

Back to the ER

Unfortunately, things weren’t so good because the day after they released me, the doctors recommended I go back to the ER. I had strange gurgling noises in my lungs, a fever, and a shortness of breath. Since I just had surgery, the doctors erred on the side of caution and had me checked out. After spending several hours in the ER, I found out that gas had collected along my chest wall and caused the gurgling noises. I also had a slightly collapsed lung from the surgery, which led to shortness of breath. Finally, because it was low grade, the ER doctor believed the fever was a normal response from surgery. After considering admitting me, the ER doctor and the thoracic surgeon on call decided that I would be just as well to continue to heal at home and let me leave.

Unfortunately, while in the ER, they only gave me some of the pain meds I normally would take, which caused my pain to increase quite a bit. And that pain proved hard to get back under control. For the next few days, the pain continued to be the theme. Wake up, pain, walk, pain, eat, pain, rest, pain, etc. Finally I heard back from the doctor’s office and they did a tiny adjustment to one of my pain medications. It helped a little, but not much.

During this time, they recommended moving and walking as much as possible to prevent blood clots and pneumonia and promote healing of the remaining lung. Because just walking around the hotel gets boring we decided to make a trip to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History as well as the Cleveland Botanical Garden. Both offered wheelchairs for me to borrow so I could alternate walking with sitting and resting. We got discounted tickets with the Museums for All program and didn’t stay long, but it was good to get out for a bit.

At the Museum of Natural History, they had an exhibit with various live animals who make their home in Ohio and we went in early morning so were able to see the otters play and splash around and the coyotes howled and the porcupine danced (really – though he was probably just scratching an itch!). Most of the museum is closed right now for renovations, but we were able to see a 3-D show about bird migration and look at some really neat rocks/gems and see Balto.

The Botanical Garden had beautiful gardens outside including a lovely garden which I really enjoyed since roses are a special favorite of mine. Inside they had two sections, a Costa Rican rain forest with butterflies, birds (who called back when you whistled at them), and tropical plants, and a spiny Madagascar dessert filled with spiky cacti, succulents, and little critters like a lizard. And of course, I brought home my very own new house plant who I named Howie.

Those trips made a difficult time a little brighter. Finally, on Friday, we had an office visit again and while she cleared me to return home and went over the pathology report (more on that in the next post), she ignored my explanation that I continued to have significant amounts of pain – even walking out of the room while I was asking for help with it. This was incredibly frustrating and more than a little disheartening. I do have an appointment with my regular pain management doctor on Monday to try to figure out a plan.