Day five

Today I am feeling really good! I am still having gas pains, which seemed to have been delayed, but any pain from the incisions is gone. Since day 3, I have been sore around my abdominal area, but no lingering pain. I can get in and out of bed without groaning, and I can even sleep on either side of my body. I cannot sleep on my tummy yet.

The gas pains are another story. I was fine the first couple days post-op, but on Thursday, I started to get a not so pleasant pain in my right shoulder. I went ahead and used a heating pad to try to subdue it, which seemed to work at the time. Yesterday (my first day back at work), the pain came again and was pretty terrible. I went to the store and bought those stick on 8 hour heating pads, which helped. It seemed like the pain spread a little into my neck region last night (right side), so not only was my shoulder sore, but my neck too! I have today off, then fly to Las Vegas tomorrow for a work conference, fly home Monday night, and then only work a partial day Tuesday. I am hoping the pains will be gone by then.

My incisions look good (good = just got hit by a car ;) and I have made sure to avoid washing or touching them. I did notice after my morning shower today that one of the larger incisions was doing some spotty bleeding, so I put on one of those huge bandaids so it would cover the whole incision, but I wouldn't be pulling on the surgical tape when I took it off.

I have noticed the return of hunger signals since yesterday. It's not too bad, being that I can still only eat a little, but I was hoping I'd be one of the lucky ones who has no interest in food. Oh, well. I have found that a pretty delicious meal is the cream of potato soup (condensed) prepared as instructed, then hand blended to smoosh the potatoes, topped off with a little black pepper. I had it last night and I had to stop the fat girl eat as much as possible mentality.

This morning, I made a chocolate peanut butter shake. I used 2% reduced fat milk (recommended by my dietician for the first month post-op), one scoop of Body Fortress chocolate protein powder, and one serving of creamy peanut butter. Throw it in a blender and let it mix well :) It is definitely satisfying a sweet craving I had.