Surgery is over and I got home on Tuesday afternoon. I'm doing alright for the moment, but I am weak and in a fair amount of pain. My doctor doesn't want me driving and would prefer that I not return to work or drive for two weeks.

I just got my staples out yesterday, and have tape all over my tummy. One of the incisions isn't taped well enough and is leaking, so I might have a problem with that one. I'll be calling the doctor first thing next week. But here's the back story and all the went horribly wrong. Pharris luck...I shall never escape thee.

The first thing that went wrong was...I was going to get a shot in my back to help for pain. This shot was like a epidural and would last for several days after the surgery to help with the pain. Well, I have several sore spots in my lower back, and the shot would just happen to go in one of those sore spots. So they couldn't give it to me. At that point I should have called everything off. That should have been my warning sign, but I'm stupid.

Next thing to go wrong, the doctor was using a robot, and the robot was using a balloon to hold things out of the way so the chopped up kidney could be removed-the balloon broke! So what was originally going to be 3 incisions turned into 6-one being a good 4 inches long. I look like Frankenstein's Monster. Tim keeps joking that I look like the Borg(staples). I don't find that funny. I also lost a lot of blood because of this during the surgery. They didn't give me a transfusion though at the time.

I don't remember anything that happened until I woke up Saturday. I was told I was talking to people on Friday, but the morphine must have had me so messed up that I just don't remember anything. I was in a lot of pain from what they tell me. I would hardly let the doctor touch me. I guess the only reason I came too reality on Saturday was because they took me off the morphine. Apparently, I would stop breathing for no reason at all. They were afraid I was getting pneumonia and they were also worried that my heart was racing.

So they took way the good stuff and put me on vicoden, which did nothing for the pain. They took out the catheter and made me deal with the pain of getting in and out of bed to walk around. Ouch does not cover it. I wanted to torch the hospital. Fortunately for them, I was too weak to manage it. After a day of walking around and being forced to sit up, when I was dead tired and wanted so badly to sleep(my roommate stayed up all night watching tv each night and I can't sleep with lights on).

I was given hope on Sunday that I would be going home on Monday. And all was fun until 9:05pm Sunday evening. A nurse comes into my room and tells me and mom that I'm being moved to another floor where I'll be more closely observed, and I'll be given a blood transfusion. WTF? So the nurse and mom start running around the room trying to get my stuff together. It's nuts. I'm trying to text Tim to tell him what is going on as he closes BAM. He was going to come and pick mom up after work and now he will not know where to find us. I don't know where to tell him to go.

I get to the first floor and my new room. After meeting my new nurse, she tells me I will not get any sleep because a blood transfusion takes 3 hours and I will be getting 2 of them. And she has to do several other things before she can give me the transfusion. I try to explain to her that I was told all my vitals had been going back to normal and I didn't understand why this was happening. She told me that the heart was still beating too fast and I still wasn't getting enough oxygen. She said the kidney was trying to restore the blood I lost and the heart was struggling to compensate for the lack of oxygen.

Well, I don't see were I was watch any closer on that floor. I ended up stuck with needles so bad in two areas that I yelled and refused to let them take more blood from those places again. I have bruises all over my arms. I felt worse after the blood transfusion, I don't care who much better I supposedly looked-I felt like s@#t! If didn't bring my heart rate under control and it didn't help me breathe any better.

They finally ordered me breathing treatments, and I didn't get to go home on Monday like I was told. At this point, Tim had rearranged his work schedule 3 times to make sure he had a way to get me home.

Well, finally the doctors figured out that stress and anxiety was causing my heart to race, and the surgery had revived my old problems with asthma, which I haven't needed to be treated for for about 8 years. So they let me come home with a butt load of new meds and new appointments to keep.

Returning to the stress of life at home-my family wouldn't let me take a break even if I were at death's door-has made me cry several times since returning on Tuesday. Still it's better than having those demons jabbing at me every 5 minutes with their needles. There are a few of them who earn the title of nurse and phlebotomist , but not very many. And I can sleep here! Thanks be to God, I can sleep!!!!!