Well it's been a week since my surgery and I realized I hadn't posted anything.  Peter just left for the US (I sent him back early...he needs to get back to his normal life), while I stay here in Costa Rica another 5 days or so.

I'll pick up where I left off.  The day after my surgery..  During the day was fine.  I slept on and off mostly, ate lunch and dinner in bed, didn't get up much.  The nurse taught us how to rock me up to get out of bed.  Basically like a second person laying down a baby....I put my hands behind your neck and you put your hands around me and on my upper back and sort of rock up (to get up) and rock back (to lay down).  It's difficult to do both at this point.  Sleeping this night was the worst night ever.  I had severe lower and upper back pain the entire night and could not get comfortable.  You cannot lay on your stomach, and really can't lay on your sides.  You can only lay on your back.  The next day the nurse and I discovered the lipo incision holes on my lower back that were not really covered by any padding and that was what was causing the pain.  Since then, sleeping has still been difficult, but better, especially with some padding back there.

Sunday morning I took a shower for the first time.  This was an experience.  By "I took a shower", I mean the nurse gave me a shower.  They put a chair for me in the shower and she took off all of my bandages.  Half laying/half sitting naked in bed, I was really struggling to get up, mostly because it was all sinking in.  Finally the anesthesia had worn off totally and I was in reality...I had actually done this terrible, horrible thing to myself.  So I was really dizzy, lightheaded, etc.  She kept rubbing alcohol on my neck....she said she didn't know why it seemed to help, but it seemed to help people. Perhaps it did.  Anyway, I decided to be a big boy and get up and sit in the shower, where she washed me (I washed my own junk as best as I could).  Got out, dried off, she blow dried my incisions, bandaged me back up, put the girdle back on and that was that.  It was exhausting.  I think I laid in bed for at least 2 hours after that.

I can't stress enough how uncomfortable I was.  There's no position to get comfortable in at this point.  And the drains (two little tubes that come out of your groin about an inch above your penis) are extremely uncomfortable, pinch and pull the skin often and just make life generally irritating.  But they are necessary.  The two tubes feed into one, which feeds into a canister that I wear around my waist.  The nurse empties the canister twice a day.  Keep track of not only how much fluid but also the color of the fluid.  It starts out bloody red, but will eventually get more and more yellow as time goes on.  At this point, I was putting out about 150cc of fluid twice a day for the first couple of days.  If you have a weak stomach at all (which I usually do, but it hasn't bothered me for some reason), the stuff that comes out of you is disgusting.  It's a mixture of blood, blood clots, stringy things, other fluid and fat.

The rest of Sunday was relatively uneventful, though I think we may have gone downstairs to eat at least one meal instead of eating in bed, because the nurse wanted me up and walking around a bit.  Sunday night was a better sleeping night.

Monday I did not shower because I had a doctor's appointment at 10am.  We ate breakfast, then left for the doctor.  They washed all of my incisions, the doctor looked at me and said that everything was looking really good, then they bandaged me back up and sent me back here.  Monday was a boring day.  Also, the antibiotics were really messing up my stomach (take them after you eat a full meal; it got a lot better once I figured that out).  I also started itching today like crazy, and not able to scratch anything.  Ugh.  It didn't matter all that much because most of my midsection is completely numb (and apparently will be for months, if not a year -- if it ever comes back).

Tuesday I sort of hit the wall and freaked out.  Please take note: occasionally you will lose your shit and wonder what the hell you did to yourself.  Don't panic, it happens to everyone from what I can tell.  Tuesday evening was like that for me.  No longer was I extremely tired (for the first several days you will just be tired and sleep most of the time), so I had a terrible time falling asleep.  I sat on the bed at about 8:30pm on Tuesday evening and asked Peter what the hell I had done to myself.  Why was I so stupid to do this mutilation to myself?  This was all a big mistake.  I grabbed a book and went downstairs where another lady who had a breast augmentation, eye lift and tummy tuck was sitting.  We ended up chatting and I told her why I had the surgery done and she shared some of her stories.  She also had undergone surgery on the same day as me, so we were at the same point emotionally.  It was nice to talk to someone in the same boat as me, and I think we cheered each other up.  I think I was the last person up that night in the inn as I read and looked out over the dark city.

Wednesday I was in better spirits.  I decided that I would do some work to pass the time, as I literally can't just sit here doing nothing anymore.  I took some online classes for work and responded to a few emails, blah blah.  It made the day go by somehow.  Other than that, Wednesday was uneventful.  By now, the itching has mainly stopped, though I get really weird pangs of either itch, or pinches or something randomly over my body, not even particularly where the incisions are.  Actually, where the incisions are for the most part I don't feel anything.  The weird feelings are occurring where they did lipo...I think it's the skin reattaching itself to my body, so I'm chalking it up to a healing thing, but it feels very very weird.  Also, on Wednesday I was pretty much able to take a shower on my own, though I did still need the seat for most of it.

Yesterday (Thursday) I went back to the doctor, so no shower.  My routine is pretty standard now...We wake up, go down and eat breakfast, take my pill cocktail (anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, iron supplement, plus any normal medicine I always take), the nurse comes in and takes my dressings off, I take a shower (except when I go to the doctor because they wash me there), she rebandages me up, empties my drains and puts the girdle back on me.  So Thursday morning I went back to the doctor.  Not much happened.  They cleaned me, told me that the incisions looked great and were healing from what they could tell perfectly, and the nurse took out 2 little stiches on my upper belly that were lipo holes...PROGRESS.  The drains are going to stay in until Tuesday (11 days total).  Sent me back to the inn.  The rest of the day was very boring (sense a theme here?).  My drainage is down to about 110cc over the course of an entire day (much better than the 300cc I started with).  I think the doctor wants that significantly lower before taking the drains out (around 30cc), but the color has turned to mostly yellow.

I will have to say this, every day is getting easier to get around.  The tightness of the girdle can really make or break your day, so if you find yourself feeling not good (i.e., you feel gassy or have indigestion), it may just be the tightness of the girdle.  It should be very tight, but loosen it slightly.  It gets hard to breathe otherwise, and squeezes your organs and can make you feel ill and out of energy.  So just loosen it a little bit and you will probably feel better.  I can also get in and out of bed totally by myself now, though it still hurts if I move too quickly or twist the wrong day.

I'm not going to post any pics yet, mainly because I don't have any.  I'll probably post more later today, but this post is too long already!