In my previous post<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, I talked about the days leading up to surgery, pre-op and the morning of surgery.\u00a0 This is where I’ll pick up.<\/p>\n

I knew I would be intubated, as the anesthesiologist said it was necessary to keep the airway open while I laid on my stomach for the back of legs to be worked on.\u00a0 She also told me that when it was time to wake up, she would call my name and remove the tube very quickly.\u00a0 I don’t remember anyone calling my name, but I remember the feeling of something moving, like being pulled away from me.\u00a0 I honestly couldn’t tell you if it was a catheter being removed, or if it was the breathing tube.\u00a0 Whatever it was, it didn’t hurt.<\/p>\n

The next thing I remember is standing back in the pre-op room with two nurses pulling compression pants on me, tucking and having me help as much as I could.\u00a0 I remember thinking my hamstrings were tight, and doing a long stretch where I put my hands flat on the floor and the nurses making a comment about my hypermobility.\u00a0 Dr. Schwartz came in and they told him I’d stretched like that and he chuckled about his hypermobile patients (Hypermobility and lipedema go hand in hand.\u00a0 Mine is called Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, in fact.)\u00a0 Anyway, I don’t remember many details about being in recovery.<\/p>\n

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At some point they wheeled me and my little bag of personal belongings out, where a driver from Pearl Recovery Center<\/strong><\/span><\/a> was waiting for me in a black, tinted out Mercedes.<\/p>\n

We drove straight to the under-building, private entrance garage of the Viceroy hotel, where I was able to get in another wheelchair, rolled down a red carpet (really!) and into a private elevator.\u00a0 Once we got up to the second floor, my door was open and there were nurses standing there to greet me, and puppy pads were everywhere – on the floor, the bed, the pillows.<\/p>\n

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All I had to do was get in bed.\u00a0 The nurses worked in teams of two and three and fussed about me, bringing me ginger ale and crackers, tucking me in, checking my drains, checking my vitals, and doing introductions.\u00a0 I had a good, sore throat and a dry mouth.\u00a0 I alternated between sleeping, and waking up to drink or munch ice for a good while.\u00a0 Every now and then I’d get up to use the restroom, the nurses would come change the puppy pads, and they’d take vitals or give me meds.\u00a0 Somehow I made a video during this time talking about my sore throat.\u00a0 My face is very swollen in video one – I was warned this would be the case since surgery was face down, and it would go away.<\/p>\n