The boy ain’t right

About two and a half weeks after the surgery (17 days, to be precise), I’m at the point where I have delusions of normalcy. I’m driving places, I’m walking around everywhere without the need for an escort, I’m even contributing a small amount to the regular workings of the house, like feeding the animals and cleaning up the kitchen. And I went to work yesterday for almost 5 hours, and a couple hours today. So of course, you can see where I might think that I’m almost done with this whole recovering phase.

Think again. Yesterday’s stint at work thoroughly exhausted me. And when I decided to stay up until 10:30pm instead of calling it an early night, my body once again took it upon itself to communicate in no uncertain terms that this was unacceptable. My blood pressure shot up, I got shaky and panicky and let’s just say it’s absolutely no fun. You push your body too far in this recovery period, it pushes back. And hard.

I got to spend most of the morning drinking barium milkshakes. Since part of my abdomen has felt bruised for going on 2 weeks now, the nurse practicioner ordered an abdominal CT scan, just to make sure everything was okay inside. And although it was originally scheduled for this past Tuesday, no-one had bothered to tell me to show up a couple hours early for the super fun barium drinking. So they gave me some “to-go” and changed it to today. It’s an odd drink – kind of like a vanilla milkshake at first, but then with the after taste of chalk, Milk of Magnesia and special extract of nasty. And you have to drink 3 bottles of it. Bleugh.

The CT scan itself took no more than 5 minutes, after which they said “Oh, by the way, the barium does have a sort of laxative effect, so don’t be surprised if that’s how your afternoon goes.” The icing on the cake. The nasty, runny, and rather inconvenient icing. Oh, happy day.

I have no idea if other pituitary patients go through this after surgery. The surgeon’s only theory was the one about being leaned on during surgery. I left a message with the endocrinologist to ask about it, but either he doesn’t check his messages, or it’s just not a big enough concern to call me back. Or he’s sitting around somewhere taking bets about how long it’s gonna take before my gall bladder explodes.

So that’s been the real downer of the week. My head has been healing nicely, but I’m now seriously distracted by this whole gut thing. And as Lynn mentioned in one of her comments, it’s tumoritis – I’m now convinced that I have a tumor growing anywhere in my body that doesn’t feel right. Maybe THAT’S why I’ve got such an extruding gut. It’s not all those years of beer and doughnuts, it’s a tumor! I may joke, but that’s exactly what goes through my head right now, especially when nobody has given me a decent explanation for the bruised gut.

Otherwise, the lip, teeth and palette seem to be in slow motion as far as the recovery goes. I’m getting used to it a bit, but I would really prefer to be able to bite into an apple or anything crunchy and actually feel it. But apparently this is normal, and in a few months I’ll be laughing without worrying that my upper lip will explode from the stretch.

On the positive side, I have gotten thoroughly hooked on the computer version of Scrabble.  I fear this may greatly affect my productivity as I launch back into work next week on a more regular basis.

My name is Dave, and I’m a Scrabble junkie. Maybe I’ll host a recovery party where we all play Scrabble, have nose-blowing competitions and do Barium shots.

Start thinking of your excuses now, because you’re all invited.