First off, I want to thank the folks who messaged me post-surgery. I appreciate your support and consideration more than you know. I’m feeling pretty tired, so I’m going to make this kinda quick.

I checked in for surgery Thursday morning and was all done by noon. After a few hours in recovery, hubby and I were on our two hour drive back home. That’s when things went wonky.

Once I got home, I just wanted to sleep so I headed upstairs. Thing is, I couldn’t get comfortable because of a dull aching pain in my left shoulder. I had felt it post-op and reported it to the doc. He called it “referred pain” and said that it wasn’t uncommon. His logic behind it seemed quite sound, so I didn’t think much of it.

Hours later, around 9pm it was unbeaarable and I was vomiting and nauseous. Hubby took me to the ER and my lipase/amylase levels were over 1400 (around 160 is normal, depending how you measure them). My blood pressure (which had ALWAYS been normal), was off the charts. No fever, but obviously something was wrong with my pancreas.

They admitted me and did a fluoroscopy to determine if there was pancreatic acid or stomach acid leaking into my gut. According to the surgical consult they brought in, there was no leak (THANK GOD) and he backed it up with “Your doctor did one helluva clean job on those sutures. I couldn’t have done better myself”.

So now it’s just a waiting game. Try pumped me full of IV dilaudid and fluids to rehydrate me. I didn’t want to see or speak to anyone. All I wanted was sleep. Finally by Sunday evening, my lipase was down to an acceptable level and my blood pressure had somewhat leveled off. I was discharged and sent home with an Rx for pain meds and a container of jello.

And that’s all there is to it.

I didn’t update because frankly, I haven’t felt like doing a whole helluva a lot since Thursday. I can’t sleep more than three hours at a time, I haven’t pooped since before my surgery and I don’t want to eat ANYTHING.

I have a pain to the left of my belly button, but idk if it’s the surgery, my pancreas, or my constipation that’s causing it. My doc has been wonderful- he called to check on me several times (he found out about my ER visit because I had spoken to his on call staff prior to checking in). He gave me his mobile number and encouraged me to text if I had any questions.

None of this is HIS fault, mind you. Of that, I am sure. What scares me is that the pain in my side seems familiar, because I’ve had it before on several occasions. I chalked it up was to a pulled muscle or overeating, but I think that it might have been my pancreas’ way of telling me to pay it some attention.

So now I’ll be visiting a gastrointestinal dude to make sure cancer isn’t in my future. Lots to absorb, as you can imagine.

For now, I’m taking a bit of a break. I’ll check in as I can and I hope everyone is doing well 😊.