Monday, June 29, 2009

Grandma's Surgery

My grandma had surgery back on June 2nd to remove a cancerous tumor from her kidney. I was able to fly home to be with her for the procedure as well as for two weeks afterwards.
The morning of surgery we had to be at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. This meant we had to leave her house by 4:45. Of course the night before I was so worried I couldn't get any sleep. I think I ended up with 3 hours of sleep that night.
The brought grandma back to the pre-op area and I got to go back and see her before surgery. The doctors were really hoping to do robotic surgery because it has a much shorter healing time. They called me two hours into the procedure to tell me they were using the robot and the surgery was going very well.
Around 1:00 that afternoon Grandma made it to her room. She was very sleepy, which I totally expected. She would sleep for thirty minutes then wake up, ask how surgery went and fall back to sleep. Then thirty minutes later she would do the same exact thing.
She cracked me up when respiratory therapy came in to her room to teach her deep breathing exercises. They were teaching her how to use the incentive spirometer, and she wanted nothing to do with it. As he was telling her how to use it, she took it out of his hands and showed him she already knew what she was doing. He was taken aback, but it was still funny to me.
She was able to go home 2 days later. She got sick the day she was coming home becasue she was given a pain pill after not having eaten solid food for three days! I felt pretty bad for her.
She was really tired and cold for the first few days after surgery. (Completely normal and expected) She also developed a cough so I made her keep doing her deep breathing exercises every 30 minutes. I'm sure it drove her crazy but I didn't want her getting pneumonia.
She stayed pretty tired up until the days before I left.
I'm so grateful I was there to take care of her. It was kinda nice to cook and clean for her after she did it for me for two years while I was in college.
I love my grandma a ton and just loved spending two weeks with her.

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