Well this past Friday was the first of my 3 vein surgeries.
If you have never had one done, it is pretty weird. After
I got there they had me undress (got to leave on bra and shirt)
and put on a pair of their tiny (for my big butt anyhow) almost
g-string like paper panties. LOL. And I had to lay on bed with
my leg bend sideways. The doc comes in and they start sticking
my with a needle all over my leg. I guess this was to give me
pain/numbing meds. The sticks stung but the one on my knee,
I thought I was gonna kick him in the face. OUCH. But that went
away pretty fast. They had to talk to me the whole time, every 30
seconds "Are you ok Christina?" "You ok?" Just to make sure I
was good and not in alot of pain or anything. I was good. Wish I had
my camera. when they got to my upper thigh, my heart started beating
super super fast. I could have started freaking out, but they said it would
stop within 1 minute. It did, so I was good. Then came the incisions,
I could feel something but not pain. Then came the catheder inserted
from what I could tell in the incision at my ankle. Now that was SUPER
weird. I could feel that going in, felt really weird. Didn't hurt, just pressure
and almost like a bug crawling thru my skin. ewwww. Then after that, (at least
I think, hard to tell since I couldn't see or feel anything), they had to give us all
sunglasses and they started using the lazer on my leg. They had to ask me every
10 seconds if I was ok. If there was ANY pain, uncomfortableness (is that a word-lol)
ANYTHING at all, I HAD to tell them. I felt pressure but no pain or burning, I did
feel like something was crawling on me, the nurse laughed and said the cord to the laser
was moving on me. That's a relief. LOL. After the laser, now the fun, cool, I am so pissed
I forgot my camera part. They (the doc and RN) started pulling the veins out thru the
many incisions. I wanted to take pics and was so mad for not bringing the camera. The doc
asked if I had a camera phone and I said DUH, so he said to give it to the nurse and she could
take a pic. Up until yesterday I could NOT see him pulling out a vein. A lady at work that can
barely see anything seen it and pointed it out to me. LOL. Everyone else just goes EWWWW.
Man o man. Anyhoo, everything turned out ok and I had to leave with this HUGE bandage,
and had to keep it on until Saturday night when I was to take a shower and let the water wash
it off. well it sure was not that easy. I had to pull at certain places. The bandages had lots of blood. YUK. I had to take 3 ibuprofins every 3 hours for 3 days. And they gave me a script for
Darvacet which I did NOT fill. There are pics below of the bandages (hard to take of myself and no one else would do it, butt heads) and of my leg after the bandages came off. When looking at my knee, it looks like I had been bitten by a shark. My sis told me to tell everyone I went to the beach and got attacked. LOL. Funny. I will look for the pic from my phone. I called the docs office a little bit ago because my ankle is still numb and I wanted to make sure that was normal.
She said not everyone gets that, but it does happen and will eventually go away. As long as it is starting to feel different and some of the feeling is coming back I should be fine. She said if I wanted to come in first thing in the morning that would be fine, I said I would wait for my appt. on Friday. The numbness in my private area and thigh has gone away now, that just leaves my inner ankle. I cant really feel anything except vibrations when I smack at it. LOL. I am still uncomfortable and sometimes certain parts of my leg hurts (mostly my inner thigh where you can tell they did the laser. Looks like I have a bad sunburn), but I am fine. I will be walking on Saturday from 5-8 so hopefully this will all be gone by then. If not, I will just take little breaks and take my ibuprofin. Oh in the pic with my bandages, at the very top you see some ink marks,
that is where he could not finish. They can only give you one bag of meds and by this time, it was empty so he could not finish. So that will have to either be done at one of the other 2 appt.s or I have to have another date set. Hopefully they can do it with one of the other 2 surgeries.