(This is a re-post from my old journal that I wrote about my cochlear implant surgery on July 12, 2006 after heavily editing the post.)

 
I only got 2 and a half hours of sleep before waking up to shower and get ready to go to the hospital. I was so quiet waiting for my family to leave the house. Once I headed out the door to the truck, I felt queasy and sick. I carried a bowl with me all the way to the hospital and didn’t throw up. We didn’t arrive in time so I could see Allison, who just had her cochlear implant surgery a few days before by the same doctor. When we were registering, the lady printed out my wristband but it wasn’t my name so she had to print new ones out. That part made me nervous!

It was not too long after when the nurse came to bring all of us (my parents and sister were there with me) upstairs to the pre-operating room but my dad and sister had to wait in the waiting room. At this point I was getting so nervous, and because of that my blood pressure was too high. The nurses were so nice. They put an IV in my hand which hurt a little bit (and I hate needles!).

I was in my hospital bed waiting while my dad and sister came in to see me before my surgery. My mom left with the nurse and came back wearing a blue gown and a cap on. We got some giggles out of it and it was a nice brief distraction from being nervous.

The doctor then came in to tell me he had just seen Allison and that she wanted him to tell me Hi. His hair wasn’t combed which made me nervous if he was awake enough to do my surgery!

The nurse gave me a “cocktail” and put it through my IV. Within minutes I felt a good buzz like I had too much to drink. The nurses scrolled me down the hall to the operating room with mom on my side. I was trying so hard to comprehend everything that was going on but it seemed impossible with the cocktail in my system. I saw an interpreter in the room and she looked a bit disappointed because mom was already in the room to interpret for me. The nurse and doctor asked me to move onto the surgery bed and the last thing I remember is my mom signing to me. 

I woke up in the recovery room a few hours later around 10AM to a really nice nurse and her name was Dawn. Every time I woke up she would be in my face smiling. Her attitude helped me feel so much better. There were a lot of other people in the recovery room with their own nurse and they were not happy campers. Dawn said I was the happiest patient in the recovery room. I did not feel any pain but mostly pressure on my head from the bandage which was a very uncomfortable feeling. My mom and sister came in to see me a few times. Later around 1PM my sister came to see me by herself and told me that a friend was being mean to her about being at the hospital and not hanging out with her. This pissed me off and while I should have not… I sent her friend a message through her phone. While I was typing away on the phone Dawn quickly came over and looked concerned since my blood pressure shot up from being pissed off. So I decided to leave it at that and let my sister deal with it because after all I just got out of surgery and I should not even need to be dealing with this.

It wasn’t until around 4:30pm when I got my own private room so my mom could stay overnight with me. My dad had already took my sister home and came back around 5PM to see me for the first time since I got out of surgery. He brought me two mini-balloons on a stick with flowers. My mom’s company also sent me flowers which was really nice. Dad stayed with me while mom went outside to call some relatives to let them know how the surgery went. That’s how close our families are! I kept falling asleep on and off and asked for more medicine because I was afraid I would feel pain. It was a pain having to get up to go to the bathroom because mom had to unplug the machine that I was hooked up to then I had to walk to the bathroom with the machine. 

The worst pain I had was air bubbles coming out of my ear. Mom and I then decided to turn the lights off around 9:30-10pm to get some sleep. That didn’t work out very well since the nurses kept coming in about 10 times throughout the night to check my vitals and make sure everything was fine. They always had to check my wristband and ask me what my name was and my date of birth. Due to being half asleep and drugged up this was hard to keep up with.

I woke up the next morning to a bad ache in my upper back and that was probably from sleeping in one position the entire night. The nurse told us we were able to leave so I went to the bathroom to put my clothes on and all of a sudden my nose started bleeding. The doctor told me I could not blow my nose for a few days and this almost made me want to cry.

A nurse pushed me in the wheelchair down to the car and a lot of people were looking at me with pity. I wondered to myself why they were and then I remembered it was because of the bandage on my head. They probably thought I had brain tumor or a freak accident.

My whole experience was great which I am really grateful for since Allison had to do the surgery again since there were problems with her cochlear implant. The only time I did get sick was when they removed the bandage. I think I got scared of having it removed and seeing my stitches. I mean… seriously I thought someone was going to rip my ear off!