Daddio: I'm Tired of Blogging About Surgery

I really am.  Long story short-- I feel completely better, the doctor thinks I've beat the infection but (as you would expect) there's still a chance it might come back in the next week.  I don't have the motivation to worry about it anymore, so I'm not going to.  I feel better and the doctor says I don't have an infection, so guess what?  I think I'm all better!  Of course, once I get that all clear from the doctor in two and a half weeks, I'll post that up too and hopefully we can put an end to this whole chapter of our lives.

In happier news, we had a normal weekend this weekend (or at least something that constitutes "normal" for a family of ten).  I made Jen come up with a list of stuff that I could get done around the house and on Sunday I finished the whole list.  I assembled some shelves, put in a new toilet paper holder in the kids bathroom, fixed something on our main fridge, fixed the fondue fork I dropped in the lint collector of our dryer (don't ask), and a bunch of other small stuff that's been building up.  It felt good to get back into the swing of things and get some stuff done.  I think (fingerscrossedfingerscrossedfingerscrossed) that we've finally turned a corner on this whole hernia/infection thing.

Daddio: Better?

I feel much more reassured since the last visit to the hospital.  Both my doctor and the radiologist seemed confident that there was no infection- just a pocket of air and some blood.  The best news about this is that if I don't have an infection now, then it's probably not coming back.  So... this could be the end of it.  I'll stay cautiously optimistic.

Daddio: I'm Drain Free!

I got my drain taken out today and the doctor thinks I've gotten rid of the infection.  He said there's a very slim chance that it will come back, but if that happens we'll know in the next week and they'll put me on different antibiotics.  It's just really good to have the drain out.  Yay me!

Daddio: Camping Out at Nana's

So I have this surgical infection which I'm recovering from (and I think I'm doing pretty well), but it's important that I don't get sick with something else.  Cue the stomach virus.  Four of the eight toes have been violently throwing up.  Two more are feeling sick to their stomach (the first sign).  I got tired of being quarantined in my bedroom with a face mask, so I'm now camping out at Nana and Popo's house until the virus burns through our house.

We're trying to figure out which of Job's plagues we'll be stricken with next.  I'm guessing boils.

Daddio: How To Change a Bag of Pus

Yes, faithful readers, you will be happy to know that I've finally documented a step-by-step tutorial on how to change your very own bag of pus. For the uninitiated, here's my situation: my parent's they went off on a week's vacation; and they left the keys to the brand new Porsche!

Okay, sorry. The deal is that I had a hernia repair and a week after the surgery, it was inflamed and infected and full of nasty pus and fluid. I went to the hospital, yelled at a bunch of people, and they drained it. But to ensure that all the fluid gets drained, and that we get any new fluid that's formed, they inserted a drain tube into my body. The tube is attached by a simple stitch at the entry point, and it's connected to a collecting "jug" for lack of a better term. The jug has all the air removed from it when it's attached to the tube and is applying suction to the tube as it tries to return to its normal shape (which is kind of like a grenade, you'll see). As this thing collects fluids, it's important to flush it out every day to ensure that nothing is getting clogged up and blocking the tube.

So once a day I have to flush out my pus bag and here's how I do it.

The first thing is to make sure everything is sterile. I don't have pictures of it, but before starting, I wash my hands thoroughly, dry them and then use some of that alcohol hand sanitizer. It's also important to make sure that you have everything you need set out properly. Here's my tools- a pre-sterilized syringe filled with distilled water; a new cap for the valve on my drain line; some alcohol swabs; and a basin to collect all the pus we'll be draining out:



Here I am modeling this year's latest model of pus bag. As you can see, it's in a transparent plastic so that you can really appreciate the bloody pus that's accumulated inside. By the way, the move I'm showing here is patented (kind of like Blue Steel). I call it, Disco Stu Needs Antibiotics!



Before touching anything, it's important to glove up. This drain goes into my body, so you have to do whatever you can to reduce the chance of introducing new bad stuff to the system. 



Now you carefully open everything up and lay it out in front of you. You want to make sure that when you need something, it's easy to just grab and use it.



Here's everything opened and ready to go. Let's flush some pus!



Here's a close up of the valve- this is the crucial device to the whole show. See the blue cap pointing down? That's a sterile cap (or at least it was sterile when I put it on). That's where the syringe is going to go. See the white handle just above the blue cap? That controls the flow of the drain. Essentially, whatever direction it's pointed to is "turned off." Right now it's pointed at the cap, which means that it's flowing from the end of the tube in my body to the drain jug. If you turn it towards the drain jug, then the flow goes from the syringe to inside my body. If you turn it towards my body, the flow goes from the syringe to my drain jug. We'll be using all those possibilities in this process.



Before attaching the syringe, you need to get the air out of the very tip-- you've seen this happen in movies all the time. I tried to hit Jen in the face with it, but missed. She was not amused.



Now you remove the blue cap and you screw the syringe on.



At this point you turn the handle towards my body, which means the flow is going from the syringe to the pus jug. You push a couple of mls of fluid towards the jug, just to clear the tube a bit from the valve.



Then you turn the valve the other way so the flow is from the syringe to the body. Then you inject the rest of the water into your body. If you think this sounds weird, it is. You can feel the water being injected in, and if you look, you can see the swelling.

You may also notice my stretch marks at this point. In my defense, I've had eight kids, so don't give me any crap about it.



Now here's the gross part. All that water I just injected into my body? Well, we've got to pull it out. So now you have to pull back on the syringe and suck out all that fresh, clean water that.... OH MY GOD, WHAT'S THAT! Yeah, it doesn't come out clean. It comes out all bloody and full of pus. And it's a little tricky because the syringe wants to push back in because you can never pull out as much as you put in-- but you can't let that happen! The only thing you ever want going in there is sterile water. So while you're maintaining tension on the syringe with what you've pulled out, you flip the handle on the valve all the way around to switch the flow from the syringe to the pus bag.



Here I am pushing back all the stuff I just sucked out back into the pus bag.



Now here's the pus jug. It's not very full, the first day it was about 3/4 full, this is hardly anything.



All you have to do is pop the top open and this thing reverts to its normal shape.



Now it's as simple as turning it upside down over your basin and squeezing out the juice. A word of warning. Don't squeeze too hard. There's a... splash effect... that can occur. You... uh... really don't want that to happen.



Once it's emptied, you squeeze all the air out of it and cap it back off so it starts applying suction to the drain tube. But it's important to make sure you've swabbed off and sterilized the drain cap before you do so.



And here we go! A drained pus jug! Awesome!



Before adding a new, sterile blue cap, you also have to make sure you've swabbed the area of the valve where the syringe was.



Oh my god! That was so refreshing!



And here's what we flushed out. As you can see, it's not all just blood and pus, there's also some detritus and what look like dead tape worms.  Yes, I'm aware of how gross it is.  Cut me some slack.  It's draining out of my body.



And that's how you change a jug full of pus.

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.

Daddio: I'm OKAY!

My hernia repair went really well this morning and I'm already home.  The surgeon said that when he opened me up, he saw that the original stitches just didn't even hold at all. The tissues must have been so inflamed that they didn't stand a chance. He was surprised that my hernia didn't reoccur before it did. With this one, he said the tissue was strong, there was a significant amount of scar tissue (which is good for the stitches holding better) and that the stitches will hold much, much better- so he's optimistic about my chances of not having this recur, but obviously it's still a considerable risk, especially considering it's happened twice already.

I'd post more, but the post-surgery drugs are making it more and more difficult to concentrate properly.  I'll try to post up more horrible gory details tomorrow as the swelling kicks in with full force.

Daddio: Getting Better

The hernia healing continues.  Some parts are hurting less and some are hurting worse.  The swelling has gone down a lot, but is still pretty swollen.  The incision still hurts pretty bad, but not as bad as yesterday.

The internal bruising, though, from where they had to shove my intestine back through my stomach wall, has gotten really, really bad.  Like a bruise that goes from must below my waist up to the bottom of my ribs on the right front and side of my torso.  But it's unlike any bruise I've ever had because it's a bruise inside my stomach and there's nothing you can do about it.  You can't stop it from hurting because the pain is triggered by food and water going through my digestive track.  It just hurts.

All in all, though, I feel somewhat better than yesterday.  So all these things are good.  Once again, the following picture has nothing to do with anything I've put in this post.

Daddio: Still Hurt

I'm wounded, toes!  Wounded!  I'm hurting worse today, but healing well.  The picture above has absolutely nothing to do with my current condition.

Daddio: My Balls Hurt

I'm out of surgery and waiting to be discharged.  As Mommio posted up yesterday, I threw up violently as a result of my allergies to the creme cake.  I threw up so violently that I got a heria.  A hernia is where your intestines pop through the muscles that hold the intestines in.  A very, very large piece of my intestines popped out (about four inches long). I went to the urgent care last night and the doctor there, in a very painful procedure, pushed my intestine back into the hole in the muscle wall.  It took about twenty minutes and hurt very, very badly.

But it was a good thing he did it, otherwise my intestine might have got necrotic and started to die.  If that had happened they would have had to remove a part of my intestine and put me on a colostomy back.  Fortunately, because the doctor last night did such a good job, that wasn't necessary.  At surgery, they essentially cut me open, put the tissues that were still sticking out (mostly fatty tissue) back into my torso, and stitched up the whole (they actually put a mesh in the hole to help it be sronger so I won't get a hernia again-- but it's still likely that I will).  Now my balls are just sore, but other than that I feel okay.  I actually feel a lot better now than I did right before the surgery.  But apparently tomorrow is going to be extremely painful as there will be much swelling and pain.  But that's normal.  I'll update tomorrow.