Well, I had my surgery on Friday.  I was hoping to post an update on how this went before now, but even though its kind of late, here it goes…

Everything went good before the surgery for the most part.  Of course I didn’t enjoy the IV part too well, and the antibiotics they gave me through it right before the surgery made my arm hurt a little bit.

I was in the outpatient recovery area for around an hour and a half before they took me upstairs to the Operating Room area.  There I waited for around 20-25 minutes before they took me out of there to the surgery room.  While in this room the doctor who did the surgery talked with me and answered my questions.  He also prayed with me which was kind of nice.

They gave me the option of either being put fully out or being left awake and put on local anaesthetic along with relaxing medicine.  I choose to be put fully out since I didn’t really like the idea of being awake for the procedure.

According to my parents the surgery took around 30-45 minutes.  The doctor told my parents that I had a pretty good size hernia and that it was apparent to him (somehow) that I have actually had it since birth.  The doctor said my muscles there were very strong so he didn’t need to use a mesh to repair it.

After I woke up I felt a little sick but was in pretty good shape.  I got out of surgery around 9:45 am and left the hospital around 1:20pm.  They gave me a vicodin pill to keep me pain free for the ride home and also gave me a prescription for vicodin.

Another cool thing they did was they gave me a medicine ball that had a long IV that went under the skin at my incision.  This thing gave me a pain killer at a steady dose of 2mg/hour for 2 days until we removed it per instructions.  The only thing I did not like about this was I had a huge ball taped to my side which made sleeping even harder.

After I got home I pretty much slept the rest of the day.  I was awake for a few hours around 10-12pm but went back to bed after that for another nice long nap till the afternoon the next day.

It really wasn’t till around Sunday night that I felt like getting up and moving around any.  On Monday I was starting to think I was getting back to normal but after I woke up on Tuesday I noticed the area around my incision was starting to become black and blue.

I was pretty sore on Tuesday and took it very easy.  I am hoping when I wake up tomorrow morning (Wednesday) that the bruising and swelling have gone down, or at least don’t get worse.

I have stopped taking the vicodin as of Monday and have been taking 2 Tylenol’s every 4 hours for the pain.  They actually said I could take 2 Tylenol’s and 3 Advil’s every 4 hours for pain after I stop taking the vicodin, but I think that is a little overkill (close to overdose) so I haven’t done that.

Well, that’s all for now.  I am going to attempt to go to school again tomorrow, but I am going to have my parents drive me.  Hopefully I am able to do that.  I should post here again in a day or so to update on my condition further.