10 days post surgery, laproscopic cholecystectomy/ I no longer have a gallbladder
I’m just going to write about how it’s been for me as I wondered before surgery what it was like for others after they’d had surgery… Warts and all.
I’m pretty sure my surgery went on for longer than it should have because we think I had an allergic reaction to something, in my notes they have written a new allergy in but I didn’t get a chance to talk to my surgeon so we’re making an educated guess, my skin was in much better condition after surgery than it was before, which is generally a sign of a strong antihistamine dose…
Unfortunately because surgery started and ended so late I had to stay in overnight which definitely sucked absolute balls because I was emotional from the general anaesthetic and the night staff weren’t allowed to give me anything but one dose of codeine and a later dose of paracetamol, which really wasn’t enough right after surgery, especially when I’ve been used to taking much stronger painkillers.
The pain in my shoulder was pretty servere, I now know that the gas puts pressure on your diaphragm that has a nerve or nerves linked to your shoulder, walking around definitely helped the pain pass.
Personally I felt much better after getting up myself and going to the toilet for a pee.
Sitting upright was most painful but bare in mind I’d had crappy painkillers too, once I’d had the good stuff it was a lot easier to deal with.
Healing has been going so well, most of the pain I’ve had was in the first week after surgery but I’m off cocodamol now, not being so groggy is nice.
The majority of pain was surrounding my bellybutton where the laproscope was put in, which made moving around quite difficult and the car journey home was not fun on the crappy roads of Lancashire, all other incision points don’t seemed to have caused me any pain. Laughing, coughing, hiccupping and sneezing hurts my bellybutton.
The pain I have now is mostly aches where my gallbladder was, it’s a bit weird knowing that there used to be an organ there… Moving around in bed is still uncomfortable, but I move from side to side a lot so I’m not surprised.
Bloating is slowly coming down and the incision points are almost completely healed.
(tmi, my bellybutton smelt pretty awful for a while whilst it was being covered but it was clean, there was no pus or blood)
My appetite slowly came back, for the first few days I literally only ate toast with some jam on, now I’m pretty much back to normal, although I ate some spicy food for my tea tonight and I’ve been super nauseous ever since.
(tmi: bowel movements, didn’t poop for the first few days, but cocodamol does tend to cause constipation, first poop was a bit painful, the second more so.. Had a slightly greasy meal and had to run to the loo a couple of times, but otherwise it’s not been too bad)
Sneezed earlier and I’m pretty sure I burst a stitch or something near my bellybutton, it hurt a lot and on and off for a long while afterwards, definitely feeling the after effects of it 😣
But all in all it really hasn’t been so bad so far.
