Daddio: Back to the Hospital

It turns out that I'm not so good at this surgery thing.  I've never had a surgery before in my life other than getting tubes in my ears as a kid and having my wisdom teeth removed.  Quite frankly, those don't count.  So to have my first hernia surgery rupture and having to have the surgery done again-- well, you would think that's bad enough luck.

But now I'm having complications again.  I was recovering really well and the swelling and pain were much better the second time around.  Then, exactly one week after my surgery, something went wrong.  I started getting new swelling and new pain.  Saturday was worse, and Sunday was worse than Saturday.  By Monday, the swelling was the worst it had been since my surgery and my pain was actually worse than when I first came home after my second surgery.

So I went to the Doctor yesterday and he was worried that it had ruptured again and we'd have to do the surgery a third time.  But he wanted to get x-rays of the surgery site to see what was going on.  I went to the radiologist and had a CT scan.  On our way back home, the doctor called with good news-- it appeared from the CT scan that my surgery was intact, but that there was a large amount of fluid collecting there.  He doesn't know if the fluid is from internal bleeding, infection or what. I started running a fever last night, so I'm suspecting that it's infection. But the point is, the fluid can be drained and will help with my pain almost immediately.  The problem is this: he needs to know for sure that the hernia surgery hasn't ruptured before someone sticks a giant needle into my pelvis to drain this fluid.

Here's where we are now: at 10:30 this morning we're leaving for the hospital.  They'll check me in and have me drink barium (god help me- it tastes like liquid chalk) and then do another CT scan.  This will let them know positively if the hernia has ruptured or not.  Assuming it hasn't, then they will drain the excess fluid.  They may want to keep me overnight if they think I have an internal infection.  If the hernia has ruptured, then we're probably going to be having surgery again.

You know, I used to be one of those people that said, "I'd never change anything about my life because it got me where I am today, and I'm happy with where I am in life."  That's no longer true.  Now I have one thing I'd change.  If I could go back in time I wouldn't have eaten that stupid Italian cream cake.