Stephanie F.
7/1/06-So I decided to post a detailed step by step account of my experience in the hospital at Lenox Hill. I know that before the surgery there was so many little details I wanted to know about, and I remember I could never get all the answers. I hope just by my description this will help someone :)
Surgery was scheduled at 7:30 a.m., Dr. Roslin's first surgery of the day. I was told to show up at 6 a.m. so I did. Went straight to the 10th floor ambulatory surgery waiting area. When I got there I was with my boyfriend and the security guard downstairs told me I couldn't have more than two people with me and I was expecting my parents. Got up there. My mom was allowed up, dad had to stay downstairs in a waiting area, but the nurse in the ambulatory area said as the room clears out they usually let family members up, and I asked her and I think it made a difference. I signed in. By 6:05 I was called into the prep area. The prep area is a big area separated by curtains that contain a rolling table and two or three chairs. I was put in my curtain. A nurse gave me a gown, told me to take off my clothes and document them and put them in a bag. She told me to have a seat. Finally a nurse came around and went through the medical history, took the blood pressure and all that. Then a nurse practicioner came in and asked all the same questions as the nurse and tried to get a vein for my blood, but she couldn't so she didn't even try it and gave up. I saw relatives for all the other people around me streaming in and so I asked for mine since surgery was nearing. I was happy to see my boyfriend, mother and father all were there. My mom told me afterwards the nurse called down for my dad after just a little bit. The nurse asks you to walk over to the scale and they take a weight. They also ask for a urine sample so you go down the hall and give them one. Then you go and sit. Then you sign some legal papers and all that. Then someone comes and says okay, it's your turn. You get up, kiss loved ones goodbye and get walked down the hall and down another hall into a pre-op holding area. If you aren't on a stretcher (which I wasn't since I had to walk, as did most people) you will sit on a chair. Dr. Roslin had just come into the hospital and he came over and said a word or two and left. Then the anesthesiologist (mine was Dr. Kurien Thomas, and he wasn't the warmest doctor I had ever met) will come over and talk to you for a bit. Then he leaves and a surgical nurse comes over and checks your bracelet and then you are lead to walk into the operating room. You get into the operating room, the anesthesiologist is already in there as is another one or two people prepping the room. They make you untie your gown in the back and lie down on the table. They position you on the table in a way so that I guess they can get the catheter in, with your butt kind of hanging off the table. They will give you a warm blanket. They might talk to you and try to make you less nervous, mine didn't. They let me bring my teddy bear in with me and he sat and watched the operation. The anesthesiologist asks you to put your arms to your side. He put the tourniquet on the left arm and said it would be tight. He put the IV in my hand and immediately gave me a dose of something to calm me down. Then I was just laying there...calm. He put a bunch of electrodes all over my chest. I started talking because I was nervous and he said you will start to feel sleepy. All the while the two other people were milling around doing whatever they needed to do. I don't remember feeling much other than sedated from whatever he put in my IV to calm me down, nor do I remember drifting off to sleep. The next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room. I don't really remember it, it just happened. I woke up, they asked me what kind of pain I was in, I told them a lot, they gave me morphine and more morphine. They asked me on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being excruciating pain, and I told them I was an 8. They told me that 5 was acceptable, lol. I demanded a pain pump and since there was no order for one they had to get a pain doctor (Dr. Kesselman, nice lady) in there to write the order. Apparently that whole process added 2 hours to the whole process in recovery. I was in the recovery room at about 9:45, or at least that's when I woke up. My doctor told me the surgery was half hour, so obviously the numbers don't add up, but whatever. I sat in recovery and was ignored for the most part, and eventually I got some attention. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHO YOUR RECOVERY NURSE IS! UNLESS YOU TALK TO HER, EVERYONE ELSE WILL IGNORE YOU! I also asked for something for my mouth and they gave me a swab and a wet gauze to suck on. I didn't know I had a specific one until I started hysterically crying in pain. I got the pain meds, I got the pain pump. They finally wheeled me up to my room on the 8th floor around 2 p.m. They put you in the bed. REQUEST A WINDOW SIDE OF THE ROOM OR YOU WILL HAVE NO REST AND NO DARKNESS TO SLEEP! The room was hot, but I had read the rooms were hot and brought a fan. BRING A FAN! You lay in the bed and you are hooked up to a million tubes, one being the catheter, which really wasn't a big deal. I was happy to not have to get up and pee. I had a private duty nurse the entire time I was in there and I think it made a big difference. You have a TV if you pay for it as well as a phone, and you need to set that up yourself either before or while you are in the room. All you need is a credit card. You can push the pain pump if you have one (Dr. Roslin said as of 6 months ago they stopped giving it for banding.) Nothing really happens until the morning except the nurses come in and give you shots of Heparin and Toprol (is that what it's called?). The Heparin is for the blood and the Toprol or whatever is like an analgesic pain killer for the swelling they said. Both of which left massive black and blue marks on my arms. They come by once in a while to take your temperature and your blood pressure and to change the foley bag if you need it. They also start bugging you to get up and walk around, and you need to tell the nurses when you are going to do that since you need to be disconnected and helped in and out of bed. You are hooked up to a monitor and all sorts of alarms related to the IV go off all the time. BRING EARPLUGS! I asked for something to help me sleep, which I got, but it was useless because at 4:30 a.m. I got a neighbor on my room, but even before that it's not quiet or restful. The remote control for the TV also has the nurses button and I kept hitting it by accident. At 6 am they wake you up to get you cleaned up or whatever, and at 8:30 or so I got wheeled in a wheelchair for the gastrographin test. Post-op it's not barium, it's gastrographin or whatever, and it tastes worse than the barium, but LITERALLY it was three sips and done. They take you in the escalator in a wheelchair, then you sit in a holding area with other people in wheelchairs waiting your turn. Then you go in, do the awful test, they help you on and off the table, then you get wheeled back to the wheelchair holding area where you wait for a hospital transport worker to wheel you back to the room. Then you wait an hour in your room for the results, which they tell YOU right on the spot, and once the floor gets your results and the okay to drink they order you a tray of saltless awful broth, a cup of decaf tea and jello. My mom brought her own chicken broth and I was allowed to start sipping that. Then Jennifer the dietician comes in and goes over everything, and then Dana, Dr. Roslin's assistant (I think Drs. Kurian and Shah's too) comes in and goes over everything again and does your discharge. They take your catheter out and your IV out, you get dressed. Then you walk yourself out of the hospital and go home. 4 "meals" of clear liquids, then you can start on Dr. Roslin's IIa diet. Have someone to help you when you get home, I needed help.
Hope this helps someone out there going into Lenox Hill with Dr. Roslin or his practice. Any additional questions feel free to ask :)
7/2-A couple of extra things:
Dana, Dr. Roslin's assistant asked me to post on this site that if anyone having surgery with Dr. Roslin or his group has a specific need or concern regarding their hospital stay that they should contact her in advance by getting her number from the main office. This might have made a huge difference had I known this since Dr. Roslin, in a 20 minute phone call with my mother, promised me he would give me a shot of valium upon arriving at the hospital just so I didn't freak. It gave me peace of mind and prevented me from switching surgeons. Morning came at the hospital and he never wrote the order and no one else said they were comfortable doing so. The pre-op staff said they paged him, he says he never got a page. Anyway, point being Dana said she would have been able to arrange such a thing for Dr. Roslin.
Secondly, a couple of things I would recommend bringing to make your stay there more tolerable:
A fan
Pair of earplugs
Night eye mask (don't know what you call them, the mask you put over your eyes to block out the light)
Chapstick
Some type of back support (my back started to really hurt me due to the lack of any type of lumbar support in the bed. I had my boyfriend bring me this styrofoam roll that I put under my spine in the bed to give it some resistance. The beds weren't so great, so this is something you might want to consider. The blankets weren't so great either, so you might want to bring a cozy blanket you enjoy.
I brought my teddy bear and he came with me into surgery and was with me afterwards. I also brought my ipod with a surgery mix I made to listen to to tune out.
When you get home from surgery you should have someone there to be with you for a day or two at the very least. Have your post-op diet needs in place before you go into the hospital.
How am I doing you ask? Well I guess 5 full days post-op and I'm about 100 times better than I was on Wednesday, the day after. Wednesday was bad. I had come off the anesthesia and the pain pump by wednesday night and I had no sleep in the hospital from the night in the hospital so I was just exhausted and the incisions hurt. Thursday was better, and by Friday I was almost back to myself, but the incisions still hurt. It's sunday and I'm much more mobile and sleeping okay. They still hurt but they are not as tight so I can maneuver a little bit. The worst part of the eating thing is in like the evening. I quit smoking too for this operation so it's rough. In the first two weeks of my doctor's diet plan there is not much in the way of satisfying foods, and not much other than cottage cheese and mashed potatoes that are salty and not made with Splenda. I find myself on the brink of smoking again just to make this easier, but I know that's not good either.
