XterraBrat

The six month anniversary of my gastric bypass will be March 20th, and I have yet to understand exactly what happened to me. September 20th, 2005 my mother and I sat in pre-op making jokes, not knowing what else to do to calm my nerves, so much so I barely felt the anesthesiologist putting in my I.V.. They started to inject me with assorted needles before wheeling me down to surgery, I remember being placed under these massive lights and shortly after that I awoke to nurses asking me the run of the mill questions. I certainly remember the painful ride back to my room where my mom and dad were both waiting. I spent the day sleeping, the night sleeping, and most of the next morning until they woke me up for the upper G.I. study... everything was all good so they removed my catheter and started me on water, god I wished they had warned me about all that Co2 they pumped into me during surgery because at about 2am I woke up, my guts feeling like they were turning inside out. Needless to say I didn't sleep much that night, but I got a lovely shower the next morning, pretty soon they were removing my I.V., next thing I knew those damn drainage tubes were coming out and I was a free woman!

I arrived home to the norm, it wasn't two days after I was back that my ex-boyfriend started again. He was being a jerk and I said, "You know I just had surgery on my stomach, what? Did you expect my entire personality to change?" His reply was, "Yeah, I was kind of hoping that it would." At the time I was too tired to fight so I just rolled over and took that one. I remember an argument with my dad about tomato soup about three weeks post-op, he was saying how good this tomato soup was and that I should try it, I snapped at him and told him how tired I was of eating friggin tomato soup. I remember waking up one morning to loud thumping above my floor, my parent's universal signal for 'get your butt up here'... so I did, threw on my clothes and let myself in the backdoor to the kitchen. To my surprise it wasn't my parents thumping on the floor, but firemen and police. I stood in the middle of the front office part of our building, my eyes shifting to watch the activity until my mother's receptionist noticed me. She threw her arms around me and warned me not to go upstairs. I felt like a little dear in headlights and asked why. She repeated, just don't go upstairs. My mother's business partner steadied me at the shoulder and said, "Don't worry. It's not your mom." (note: I still haven't been able to figure out this wording. Why would someone say that?) The receptionist blurted out that my dad had passed away. My knees went, the only thing I recall were the dogs nails clicking down the stairs and her pushing her nose up under my hand in a desperate attempt to console either her or myself. I was escorted, or rather carried, by two police officers up the stairs where I heard them fussing to make sure the door was closed, but they didn't quite make it in time and I saw for myself exactly what had happened. Blood on the wall, on the floor, a gunshot to the head. I was hurried into the next room where my mother was sitting, I put my head in her lap and just cried, like I knew what else to do. I flopped against the wall, noticing the slight smell of blood from the next room over. The chaplain, the detectives, the police, the firemen, the EMTs all moving in and out of the upstairs with the door wide open on a cold October morning.... October 20th, exactly a month from my surgery.

Family members came and left as the weeks went by, I had stopped eating all together... it was hard enough to eat before surgery, now everything was forced and I cried every time I took a bite because of the sting. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around I was eating a little, but struggling immensely with it, anything but liquids caused problems... often leading to throwing up. Several days before the holiday I made a new friend, he was on my ex-boyfriends MSN for over a year they had been talking. Accidentally one night he left himself signed in, so I get a message from this person, I said that my ex wasn't home, but if he was feeling talkative I could use some company. Over the next several nights we would go on and on for a couple of hours about cars and other assorted such non-sense. I made plans with him for fun to have lunch on a Saturday, I would meet him at work and we could go out for lunch somewhere that had soup for me. *LOL* I was a little late getting there, so he had already gone, I felt terrible thinking to myself... "he probably thinks I'm not coming." So I drove around for awhile and went back after his lunch to where he worked, NAPA. I rounded the corner of an aisle to where the back counters were and saw him, the butterflies started fluttering, the airhead complex kicked in, this was the first time I had done that in over five years... since before my ex. He spoke in a soft and richly deep voice, was the very description of my type (big and tall guy), not to mention a mechanic, which is a huge turn- on to me. He laughs now about how I was acting, although he later admitted he was nervous himself. We talked shortly there and I left as more customers came in. I called NAPA the next day forgetting all about the door handle for my Honda I was supposed to ask about, he said he would look it up, but to call him after he was off work at 2pm. The conversation that followed was nearly five hours in length and brutally honest. That same night my ex came home, I was crying, clutching my stuffed snoopy... He said, "What's wrong with you?" I told him I was just feeling sad. His response, "You use your father's suicide as an excuse for everything." That was it, that was the moment I knew it was over.... how could anyone who knew my father for five years be so cold about what happened. The relationship ended shortly there-after.

At that point, Tony stepped in, he didn't want to seem like he was taking advantage of the situation... but as he puts it now, he didn't want to let me go either. I went to Bellingham, Washington for Christmas to spend it with my brother and mom, wish I had stayed home. The two did nothing but rip on me constantly about how I chose to have this surgery so I chose to be miserable, I got this just from the eight times I ran to the bathroom on Christmas night to throw up from trying to eat some mashed potatoes. I remember the night, sitting in the bar at Anthony's when they sat and ate crab cakes, waving them in front of my face and snickering... drunk as skunks. Got home from Christmas, my mother decided she wanted me out of the house after my brother talked her into it... I didn't know what else to do than to call Tony. He offered me a place to stay at his house. He helped me pack up and move my most important possessions because I was too malnourished and sick to do it myself. The rest of it I discovered two days later in the back parking lot of the house being tossed into a dumpster. I lost most everything, except for what could fit in the back of my Xterra and his Jimmy. My brother stayed a month or longer, offering my mom the opportunity to nearly drink herself to death. He seems to forget that she just barely survived breast cancer in 2004, she’s still on chemotherapy drugs, lets just pump her full of alcohol and see if we can collect her life insurance money too. (Can anyone tell I resent my older brother just a little bit?) I didn’t speak to either of them while he was still here, but mom and I are in the process of repairing our relationship, because I do love her… even though she was terrible to me, she’s still my mommy.

I settle in at Tony’s the early part of January, in our house we have two roommates, a couple… one known as Pedro, the other I call the Ankle-Bitter, just because her personality reminds me so much of a Chihuahua. At first things were fine, as time went on Ankle-Bitter would run to tell Tony’s mom every last little detail, pretty soon Tony’s mom starts butting her nose in our business. She has the audacity to ask me questions like, “What happens when you get skinny? What happens to Tony?” Like I’m such a whore I’m going to dump him for some skinny little punk who could have never appreciated me when I was fat, why the hell would I want that? I would have a lot of fun at the garage though, his step-dad has a shop where they restore classic cars, I cried the night they sold the ’53 Ford F-100, it was so beautiful… over 110K invested in it. I was afraid to touch the damn thing, that’s how much respect I had for the work that went into it. Huddle up to the woodstove while the boys work on their cars, Tony working on the ’96 200SX he’s rebuilding for me to drift whenever I finally recover. The endoscopies started about this time, every week it seemed I was in Spokane for another stretch. Drive three hours… be poked for an I.V., sedated, garden hose rammed down my throat, wake-up in pain… go home another three hours. Four of these later they were taking about a stint to hold open the exit to my stomach, but my primary doc put his foot down and said, “enough”! Too many days in between stretches I was going without water because I could not even swallow my own spit. Besides, he was worried about these pesky staples that were very visible during these dilations. An upper G.I. study brought a few surprises, my surgeon had me come in as soon as it was done and said and I quote, “I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t watched the tape 20 or 30 times.” But alas, my larger stomach remnant had re-attached itself and created a small opening between the stomach and pouch.

February 27th I was admitted back into Sacred Heart because I hadn’t been able to swallow water for three days. I was so upset from the drive up with my mother and Tony not being there that my veins were rolling and the more they poked the worse it got. It hadn’t helped either that just before leaving the house I received a phone call from Tony’s mom saying to me that I was selfish for wanting Tony to come with me while I was in surgery, that I would be fine all by myself, that I should be pushing him 100% even when I’m sick and that she blames me for him not liking his job. Like I really needed that. It took four pokes to get in my I.V. on the inside of my wrist, they came in to draw blood four more times. My surgeon stopped by, flopped an X-ray sheet onto my bed and said, “The good news is they say I can still operate.” My reply to him was, “That’s really not funny Dr. Rawlins.” “No, it’s not. I broke my hand last week skiing.” I just flung my head back into my pillow and thought to myself, “I’m gonna die.” He announced that the surgery was moved from Friday to Wednesday morning at 7:30am, answered a few of my mother’s questions and left. I called Tony immediately to let him know that the surgery had been changed. I woke up early the next morning to a vital check and a rush down to have another upper G.I. study. Tony made it up to Spokane around 5pm that day after he was dismissed from work, his boss told him to get lost when he found out I was having surgery. I spent most of the night in the Day room with Tony, looking out over this fabulous view of the city lights of Spokane. About 2am they attempted to ram Potassium Chloride into my veins, I squirmed and grimaced as it started to go in, it felt as if someone had my arm in dry ice and my muscles seized up. The sent another staff to put in another I.V. line in my upper arm, right in the crook of my arm. Needless to say it wasn’t any better, only this time I felt the muscle freeze all the way up into my shoulder and cried from the pain. They finally gave up and ordered a central line I.V. during the surgery. I slept only a few half hour naps the whole night, Tony stayed awake… he was there as they prepped me, he was still there as they rolled me in for surgery. I saw the bright lights and then not anything until the painful ride back to my hospital room. I remember waking up in agony after my 6 and a ½ hour procedure to remove all my staples and re-staple the stomach, cut away what was left, remove the damaged part of the roux limb and re-attach it, and also remove my gallbladder. The doctor was right there and bumped my PCA up to 4 points and looked at me with a sad face, like I was some kind of pathetic and dying animal. Next morning was another G.I. study that ran into a few problems, my esophagus had completely swelled shut and nothing would go down… so I was on yet another day without water. I, however, demanded my catheter out by five that evening. Next day I started slow sips of water and it seemed to go down without a fight, so juice, and broth followed. Tony had brought me a knew teddy bear as a gift (he knows I’m the teddy bear type). So I snuggled it into my hospital bed and finally got a four hour stretch of sleep. They let me out Saturday, regrettably leaving one drainage tube and of course my feeding tube in me. Yesterday I had to drive all the way to Spokane to get my drainage tube out of me, turns out it’s infected… so I got forced into driving myself to the Pharmacy today (Tony had to go back to work) to get some anti-biotics to shove into my feeding tube. I go back in a month to get the feeding tube removed, in the mean-time I’m using it to pump absurd amounts of protein into my older stomach remnant.

If anyone else has been through this or is going through this I’d love to hear from you. If anyone has any kind of advice on what to do with Tony’s mom might be helpful too! LOL For right now the plan is for me to get well so we can move to a different city, which kind of sucks because it means I’ll be further away from my family too… and they are the sane ones.

Take Care,
Brat