I believe I’m still recovering but the dramatic pace of the first few days, where I could see clear, tangible improvements every day, is now giving way to more subtle signs of getting better.
Also, one of those involuntary body reactions I’d been fearing happened today: a sneeze.
But it didn’t go the way I expected. What I expected was a huge, typical sneeze and attendant pain as my chest expanded uncomfortably and suddenly against the surgery area. Instead, the sneeze got up to that point, then sort of defused itself, and instead I just made a tiny kitten-like sneeze. This happened twice, and it was kittens both times.
A week later I am feeling more of the general soreness and achiness, possibly a combination of reduced pain medication and sensation returning at least partially to some of the numbed area (yes, I have numbness in my chest a week later. I’ve been advised via handout that this could end up being permanent).
On the plus side, there are times when I’m sitting and reading and can almost forget I had the surgery. It doesn’t last long, but I feel it is happening more often now.
Next Friday the suture in the chest comes out and the following Monday I have a follow-up CT scan of my chest area, to make sure things look OK. Sometime in around then I will likely get the results of the pathology report on the li’l mass itself. Hopefully it turns out to be nothing more than an inert lump.
It’s cloudy today, but a few days ago I went for my first “real”1 post-surgery walk and touched trees and such along the Brunette River. Here are a few shots, taken on my Samsung Galaxy S26.
I have again used the cheesy Polaroid theme from FooGallery because I like cheese.
River shore
Looking east
Looking west
View from the trail
I’m not sure why I put “real” in quotes. I was definitely, actually walking. Maybe because I was less than 2 km from home. ↩︎
As promised, here’s my positive spin on the side effects of surgery!
Top 5 Most Favourite Things about Surgery (6 days later)
Daily incremental improvements in your stamina, sleep and health are rewarding, especially if you’re a stats nerd.
Being forced to slow down gives time to be more thoughtful, introspective and observant. This came into focus yesterday when I went for a walk and tried my usual pace (oops), then slowed down and really just took my time and soaked in the pleasantness of a warm spring day and the inviting breeze along the river trail.
The breathing exercises help reinforce good daily habits. Who knew this would be a side effect of coughing every hour?
Sympathy! It’s nice to know people care.
In a weird way, despite the pain and discomfort, the break from routine is refreshing. Sometimes change is good, or at least tolerable.
Bonus item, at least as of the first six days:
Losing weight. I’ve dropped about four pounds. This is, I think, largely due to two things:
Less snacking.
Eating healthier food that doesn’t go straight to the proverbial hips.
A combined loss of fat and muscle due to much lower physical activity (I normally run three days a week and usually walk 4 km to and from the place where I run).
No doubt I’ll be as spry as this cat in just a few short weeks!
Don’t worry, I’ll post a top 5 of most favourite things, too.
Top 5 Least Favourite Things about Surgery (5 days later)
Struggling to sleep comfortably at night with two incisions and a sutured wound in my left side, as well as a left shoulder that tends to get sore when I lay down, due to the chest tube that was inserted somewhere in a line directly below it.
Lack of stamina. If I walk at my usual pace (brisk), my chest starts to hurt after maybe 30 seconds. Which is an improvement, actually!
Being cut off from a lot of normal activities, most notably running.
Fear of pulling sutures/accidentally lifting more than the advised 10 pounds and complicating the recovery.
Today is my fourth day after surgery and third full day of being home.
All gauze has been removed, the only stuff left is what’s covering the two incisions and I’ve been instructed to let that stuff come off on its own, no touching!
The left side of my chest remains weirdly puffed out. Not in a horrible, wrong way, just in a typical after-surgery way.
My sleep has improved each night, with my Garmin Forerunner (est. 80% accuracy) giving scores of 10, 28 and 48 the past three nights (out of 100).
My left shoulder was still giving me the business when laying down as of last night. I’m hoping that improves starting tonight. I’ll probably try sleeping in a more upright position.
My energy and stamina are improving. I hit 10,000 steps for the first time since the surgery, woo. I can climb flights of stairs without needing to rest, though I am definitely feeling it more when I get to the top.
I can get the SPIRO-BALL past the 2,000 ml mark now, albeit briefly.
I was able to do some of my usual chores without much difficulty.
I secretly fear pulling out a suture.
When I reach up for something I now do it with my right hand more or less automatically.
10 pounds is the max I can carry and I’m not really sure how much that is, other than probably not a lot? When I did my laundry, I carried it to the washer in three trips.
Showering is still a bit of a nuisance, but manageable.
I’m still doing breathing exercises and coughing every hour.
I can yawn properly now. The first few days I could do something I like to think of as a micro-yawn.
I found this image that might explain why my right wrist was sore after the operation, because the arm was likely trussed up for about two hours like this:
I’m pretty sure running will be the last or close to last normal activity I resume. The incisions should be fully healed in a few weeks and I’ll see how frisky and energetic I’m feeling then.
Technically, switching from Linux Mint to Fedora (running the KDE Desktop) went without a hitch, but I know it broke the Windows MBR and I’ll have to fix that before dual boot is working correctly again. I’ve done that before, so it’s pretty much the price of admission at this point.
Why did I switch from Mint to Fedora? Mostly because I wanted a distro that was a little more modern-looking and got updates a little more frequently. Mint is very stable and Cinnamon looks nice, but it follows Windows conventions a bit more closely that I really need at this point. I mean, KDE does, too, but it still feels a little fresher. Anyway, Linux is still where I go to tinker and mess around and I wanted something new.
I’m sure I’ll find out that Fedora is now being managed by fascist edgelords or something, but for the moment I’m content to poke around and have a look.
UPDATE: I went for a short walk (four blocks total) and yep, stamina is definitely not quite 100%! I did get shots of some flowers I took, though.
I was given this device to take home and use regularly as part of my recovery.
SPIRO-BALL!
Despite appearances, you don’t blow into the mouthpiece, you suck air out of it. This causes the yellow ball to rise. My objective is to get the ball to the middle, where the happy face is:
On my first day home, I could do this, but only for a moment. Today, my third day home, I can now do it for multiple seconds, getting it up to the 2000 ml level. That may not seem like much, but frankly, I’ll take it!
The biggest realization for me coming out of the surgery is that while recovery may be relatively swift in overall terms, it will feel like ages to me. Before the surgery, I thought I’d be back to running possibly within a week (which genuinely gets a lol out of me now). The reality? I have stitches on my left side in three places that can’t come out for 10–12 days, so running, even if I had the energy, would be a dumb idea. And I don’t have the energy.
Basically, this has hit me a lot harder than I figured it would, even though what I’m going through is pretty normal for the type of operation I had.
My sleep has been poor, but is improving. I actually slept for multiple hours last night, which was nice. The sleep continues to be dreamless, though, and if my watch is right, I’m getting no REM sleep at all. But it’s getting better.
I am already much more mobile now. I can sit and stand like a normal person again, and move about without appearing to be in Grandpa Mode anymore.
Laying down is still a problem, which sucks because laying down for a nice nap would be ideal, but my left shoulder and side still ache when I recline. I mostly sleep on my right side, which is OK.
My appetite never suffered and I gained 1.9 pounds since the surgery. A lot of this is due to the reticence of my bowels to work normally. That has finally started to change, so I can hopefully stave off the Metamucil for now. I know this is TMI, it’s kind of unavoidable.
(Speaking of TMI [adjacent], they shaved my chest for the surgery pretty thoroughly–but only the left half. It looks very silly, but since I’m unlikely to go out topless any time soon, I’ll just let the fur grow back on its own.)
And on that note, I shaved my face this morning. That made me feel closer to normal. I could see enough beard growth to confirm it’s almost entirely white now. And I mean genuinely white, not gray, so I’d have a kind of professor thing going if I grew it out.
I will not grow it out. I don’t have a tweed jacket, anyway.
My energy, despite the lack of sleep, has also clearly improved. I won’t be running today, but I may venture outside, where it is a bit cooler, with some showers possible.
And in the end, I know this surgery may have prevented something worse eventually happening down the line. I try to remember that when I hit a bump in the proverbial road.
Meanwhile, here is a cat exercising.
And a photo of a flower I took when I went on a vast, four-block walk:
NOTE: I’ve updated this post on May 25 with a few edits, nothing major, just mostly fleshing things out as I remember the details.
Yesterday (Friday), I checked into Vancouver General Hospital for my first-ever surgery at 8:30 a.m. I was to undergo about a two-hour procedure to remove a fatty mass my surgeon described as the size of a “big marble.” The mass had to go because:
It could grow and cause problems for other organs (namely my lungs or heart, since it was in the middle of my chest).
It could turn cancerous, which would be bad fort obvious cancer-y reasons.
I’ve never had surgery before and I got to experience a few firsts. Unsurprisingly, none of them are things I’d want to experience again.
The check-in process was quite elaborate, most of which involved disinfecting myself before going into the operating room. I also got the first of three IVs inserted, all of which went on my right hand and two of which were inserted while I was under. My favourite part was killing the bacteria in my nose, which involved holding a device in my nose for two minutes while wearing dark glasses:
Not seen: The blue swab they shoved up each nostril and scrubbed with.
After this, I spoke with the surgeon, the resident, the anesthesiologist and got the lowdown on what would happen. The anesthesiologist confessed he’d never been under himself, so could only promise to add my experience upon waking up to those of others. He did confirm I’d be out in about 15–30 seconds after the IV started. I then got into my OR jammies and they wheeled me into the OR, which was rather chilly. There was a lot of chatter, which I’d been advised of, then they had me breathe in some oxygen through a mask because who doesn’t love oxygen?
After the third breath, I found it was several hours later, and I was in the recovery unit, with no memory of anything in-between, including speaking to the anesthesiologist in the recovery unit, who asked me what my name was and questions like that. I didn’t feel groggy or weird, and had enough drugs in me that I wasn’t feeling pain or much of anything.
The nurse attending wanted me to pee and gave me a bottle, like I was an Amazon warehouse worker. I tried and usually, I can go pretty much on demand because that’s how my bladder rolls, so to speak. But it’s common for people post-anesthesia to have difficulty, and I was also being rattled by the voice of a woman somewhere else in the room who kept regularly yelping at something being done to her. But I could only produce a tiny smidgen and proof of peeing was not sufficient. Out came the catheter, something I’d never had before.
And I was surprised. It wasn’t painful, just ever-so-slightly uncomfortable. I still told the nurse it was the least fun my penis ever had. I blame the anesthesia1Fun fact: I can never type this word correctly, I have to use the spelling checker to fix it every time.
In time, I was moved to the main recovery unit, which was semi-private and had a few other beds in it. I scored, though, getting the corner unit which had a window with a view of City Hall (the building with a flag on it):
It looks east so I got to watch the sunrise, which was neat.
On the other hand, the bed next to mine was occupied by Sir Snores-a-Lot, who could fall asleep instantly and start snoring just as fast. But I also felt bad for him because he had to get a suppository, which was one of the few things I didn’t get.
I spent the rest of Friday in my bed, with my bottle, and got served hospital food for dinner, and it was very hospital food.
I’m not sure what PUR mashed potatoes are. Pureed? Potatoes that PUR?
This dinner actually sounds pretty good! But it took a few bites to realize the fish was fish and the florets were pretty sad. The butterscotch pudding was nice, something I haven’t had since I was a kid.
As I laid in the bed, I came to realize they’d attached a lot of stuff to me in the OR:
Two additional IVs, both on my right hand (total: 3).
A draining tube on the left side of my chest.
Pads and a finger clip for blood pressure readings, which they did regularly.
Other pads to monitor vitals (five total).
And not forgetting the two incisions for the surgery itself.
I also had over the course of my visit:
Two x-rays. The first was a portable machine brought to my bed, the second they wheeled me down to the ground floor (I was on the 12th) to a very cold room and had me stand in front of the x-ray machine. I was then wheeled to a holding area for an intern to take me back up and had time to contemplate my navel and such.
Blood work. This went smoothly.
A shot for blood thinning, due to the risk of clots post-surgery. This also went smoothly.
The aforementioned catheter.
Pills, pills, pills! And a few pain drugs delivered by IV. They were giving me three Tylenol every four hours and sometimes a small opioid for extra zesty pain relief. I got a prescription for some to take home, with the attendant sheet in the bag that warns how opioids are addictive, deadly, terrible and so on. I stopped taking them after the first night, but have a few left if the pain returns.
I’m sure there’s more. It may come to me when I am further away from post-surgery brain.
The one night I was there I found it difficult to sleep because of the extreme soreness. This is not surprising. When I look at where they made the incisions on my left side, between the ribs, and where the mass was–right in the centre of my chest, that’s quite the journey through my guts. Still better than the medieval days when they would have cracked open my ribcage. I mostly closed my eyes and drifted in and out. On the other hand, I stayed in bed for more than 24 hours post-surgery, so I still ended up getting some sleep. All completely dreamless, too.
I brought along my Kobo reader and iPad, but didn’t have the energy to use either. I used the phone for a bit of texting and a call to Jeff.
The second day was all about whether I’d have to stay another night and this would hinge on the second x-ray. Fortunately, after that x-ray I was informed that I have “large, healthy lungs” and was released.
Strangely, just before this, I started to experience some of my worst pain. It was so bad I even thought about asking to stay a second night. My left shoulder–which they said could be sore as a result of the draining tube–became so sore that it made my whole chest throb. This was deeply unpleasant and soured my release.
Fortunately, once I got home, I began to feel a lot better–just like everyone at the hospital had said. Such smart people.
The staff were all great, too–professional, knowledgeable, friendly, everything you’d want while going through a fairly unpleasant experience.
And now I have my pain pills and a regime to follow, with a list of dos and don’ts for the next four weeks. I need to cough a lot. I can’t lift anything over 10 pounds. No running or other strenuous activities for probably the next four weeks. I will obey but was also advised that I could do things if I felt comfortable doing them.
I’ll probably add more to this post as I remember things. While the surgery was a unique experience, and I’m glad the serendipity of the mass showing up on the CT scan for my kidney infection a year and a half ago ended with it getting removed, it was not in any way a fun experience.
UPDATE: I tried climbing into bed to sleep, as one does, and my shoulder seized and started aching like crazy. Whoops. I applied some Rub A-353 to both shoulders and the base of my neck and settled on staying up most of the night, dozing occasionally in the office computer chair, one of the few places I can sit and not feel immediately uncomfortable. I expect over the next few days the pain will change more to discomfort. I mean, it better!
