Well, I made it through the surgery and both surgeons were very pleased with how things went. I had to arrive at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. to get registered and do some pre-op things. Then there was some confusion when they discovered that I had a port (even though I told them that when the hospital called with some pre-registration questions on Monday). So they had to wheel me all the way across the hospital complex a few buildings over to get my port accessed and then they had to wheel me all the way back. Apparently that made some people a little irritated because it put them behind schedule.
When I finally got to the operating room, I met the liver surgeon and then they took me in the room to get an epidural started to manage the pain. After that they laid me down on the bed and I don't remember anything after that until they were trying to wake me up and told me that the surgery was over.
They started with the liver part of the surgery and apparently there were two small spots there. It had looked like just one on the CT scans. The liver transplant surgeon was able to successfully remove both of those spots with a clear margin around both. They said that it looked like the tumors started on the surface of the liver so they most likely had migrated over from the original ovarian tumor instead of entering the liver through the bloodstream. That was some really good news because it means that the cancer might not be as widespread as originally thought. That part of the surgery took about 1 1/2 hours. The total surgery was about 5 hours. The main surgeon then took over and she said she was really pleased with how the surgery went and how well the chemotherapy had shrunk everything. They did a hysterectomy and removed my omentum as well as some small spots here and there that they found. They also took biopsies of most of my organs. They had to remove a portion of my diaphram, a tiny spot or two on the bladder and then a small, second appendix that I had for some reason.
When they brought me out of sedation I felt really nauseous and sick and I ended up throwing up a couple of times. They quickly gave me some anti-nausea medicine to counteract that. I was in the post-surgery recovery room for an hour or two until I was stable. They gave me two units of blood while I was there. I was really dry in the mouth and finally was able to get them to bring me some ice chips. I couldn't get enough of those. It also took me a while to finally get them to bring in a pillow to put under my knees. My back was killing me!
Then I was taken up to my room where DH was already waiting for me. Man did I feel out of it. I ended up just laying there trying to sleep. I heard DH call a few people on the phone. I had a really hard time finding a comfortable position for my back, neck and belly and it really hurt to try and change positions. I was pretty swollen after the surgery and had a hard time opening my eyes all the way. I have tubes and wires poking out everywhere. The worst one is an I.V. that sticks straight out from my neck. It is a large I.V. so they can give me things like blood through it. It looks pretty gruesome though.
DH ended up leaving around 8:00 to go home and take care of the kids for the night - my parents had been watching them all day.
