When the leaking begins...
Besides being tired a lot and having an attention span just a tad longer than that of a 2nd grader, I thought I was recouping fairly well. I had been humbled by my venture out to Target, focusing on resting in bed the next day with a limited number of trips down the hall and back. After watching my 2nd movie of the day, I got up to discover blood on the heating pad I was using to reduce the bloating and pressure I had been experiencing. I called for my husband, and we investigated the scar to find that it was leaking. We called the doctor, and he said to come in. The receptionist said he had an opening in an hour and a half. That's when my "morbid thoughts are being hidden by my cool under pressure" posture and my husband's "what do I do, and how do I not show her how scared I am?" strained look kicked in.
I had my husband call my brother to alert him that he might need to pick our son up from school. As my husband did that, I started repacking my hospital bag. I had no idea what was going to happen. I was terrified that my guts were going to fall out and/or that the doctor was going to have to put me under again to restitch my incision. I calmly gave my husband one task at a time to do so he would be out of my way as I tried to get control over things that didn't seem to be controllable. These tasks were simple and direct since when he is stressed he can't multi-task. I had a binder filled with all of my hospital records. I grabbed it and my bag and we left for the doctor.
We didn't have to wait long. The nurse brought both of us into the examine room, and she took a look at the incision site. "Yep, you are having frank bleeding," she said. Another one of those terms you hear and have to pause to think about. "Frank" - my incision from evicting Charlie produced frank bleeding - what is it with the men's names and my very female problems? At least my problem was being straightforward. In fact, the situation was so straightforward that we were there for a little over 2 hours while my wound drained all over the exam table.
It is times like these when being in control of things just ain't happening. I had to lay flat and let others clean things up, squish out the old blood and fluids, clean me up some more, etc. My husband definitely got the "for better or worse" part today as he sat letting me squeeze his hand as the doctor squeezed my belly like an inordinately large blister. Leeches would have been useful at this point. It was definitely a "letting" of post-operative fluid retention. The doctor said that some build-up of blood and fluid was normal, but what I was experiencing was the most he had ever seen (Go me! - got to do everything bigger and more dramatically than anyone else). It was actually grosser than my description, but in hind sight, it felt really good to get that stuff out, less of the bloating and more of the floating away on the table in my mess of fluidic discharge.
The hardest part was laying there not able to do anything, watching the doctor and nurse for signs of worry/alarm (that came and went a few times). Watching my hubby as he went from grossed out to clinically fascinated about the process (no choice for him but to do that in the 2+ hours that we were there). I was totally helpless and dependant on others. Not a position (pun intended) that I want to be in again. That was Tuesday; 2 days latter, I'm still a leaky scar, but things can only get better...
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