A Surgical Story Part Two: The Fateful Fart

One of the hardest times of being a parent is killing time, sitting in a waiting room lobby while your child is undergoing surgery several floors above you. Just as we had been assured would happen, the surgeon came to see us once our son was in the recovery room and explained what he did and that everything went well. We were very impressed with this gentlemen when we met him for the first time at our consultation. This man knows his business and travels the world to educate and help others to perfect this particular surgery. My son liked him right from the start and felt quite comfortable. Yes, yes. This was the one he wanted to take care of his problem.

Our arrival up to his hospital room coincided with our son being wheeled down the hall from recovery en route to the room. I had forgotten how people look fresh out of recovery and after taking once glance at him I felt like bursting into tears of relief, joy, empathy and shock at his appearance because I'm a menopausal, sentimental old fool and one can only hold things in for so long. However, I pulled myself together rapidly to present a brave face as we accompanied him through the door. My recollection is a very pale young man on oxygen lying supine on a bed, a nasogastric tube down one side of his nose and a Foley catheter hanging from the side of the bed. The oxygen and catheter were taken away immediately after settling him in his room. My husband does not concur with this memory and only agrees with the N.G. tube. Perhaps I was hallucinating. After all, I'd only been up since 4 AM that morning and it was now going on 3 PM.

As he began to come around a little more, it was that tube that was causing him the most distress. I've only seen N.G. tubes carrying nourishment into the stomach of individuals not able to swallow. Evidently it works in the opposite direction as well because this was drawing some nasty looking stuff out of his stomach. The presence and discomfort of this tube seemed to be worse for him than any incisions lower down. That tube had to go and thankfully before too much more time went by, one of the nurses got the orders to pull it out. The next chief complaint was a sore shoulder and neck. God knows what position they had him in during surgery but whatever it was left its mark after almost three hours of surgery. Some nice, friendly morphine took care of these problems and the ever increasing pain at the surgical site. As he drifted into a mildly drug-induced state, we drifted out of the room knowing he was in good hands and there was nothing more we could do for the time being. An eighteen year old doesn't really want Mom hovering about but takes great comfort in knowing that she's going to be only a phone call away.

When we returned the next morning, our son was up and sitting on the edge of the bed looking a whole lot more like himself. As usual with such surgeries, he was started on a liquid diet and one look at the breakfast tray on his side table told me he hadn't taken in a thing. He was still hooked up to a saline drip bag and at this point had eaten about one spoonful of putrid looking green Jello and some ice chips. He had no appetite at all, not surprisingly, and the chicken broth, apple juice, hot tea, and the ubiquitous Jello (multi-colored this time) did nothing to spur things on.

The nurses impressed upon him he needed to at least drink water. By this time, he'd had enough of the "hospital experience" and just wanted to go home. On a regular basis, the nurse appeared to check vital signs, listen for bowel sounds and inquire about his level of pain. Apparently it was bearable because he never asked for any additional pain reliever after receiving the last infusion of morphine which had worn off long since. We were assured his gut was making good bowel sounds but what they were really waiting for was evidence of, ah...flatulence. That's right, one good fart and you're out of here, kid! Then everyone's sure things are moving along and all systems are, if you excuse the pun, go. As you can imagine it's hard to get things going when there's nothing in your stomach to get. A nurse offered him a choice of some cereal or a piece of bread and peanut butter. He chose the latter. It was the creamy variety too. What luck, his favorite. It took him more than 30 minutes to get that slice of bread down.

He'd been in and out of the restroom a lot throughout the day because that bag of slightly salted water somehow created gallons of liquid. The hours were ticking by and finally through the closed door following yet another trip to the john, our son announced that the much anticipated event had occurred. Houston...we have lift off. Honestly, the balance of our private little planet was hanging on this one little phffft. It took about another two hours after this before we were officially discharged and on our way home. We live several counties away but for insurance purposes, this entire process had to been done in San Francisco. I knew the ride home was going to be long and hard on the patient. No matter how hard you try, it's impossible to avoid all the bumps, twists and turns on the road and traveling along at a good clip to keep up with traffic. The weather had been very hot the short time we were away and once we finally walked through our front door around 7 PM Saturday night, the house was hot and stuffy and...hot. My son flopped down onto the sofa. Within five minutes he was back up and in the bathroom...vomiting. Hell, I thought, we're right back where we started. We set the patient up on the sofa bed in the living room, got some Gatorade into him and pointed a box fan in his direction. It was all uphill from that moment on. The ride and the heat and a great deal of pent-up anxiety were to blame for this backward slide.

It's Tuesday afternoon now and I'm pleased to say he's doing just fine. His appetite's back, his discomfort seems to be minimal, if not non existent, and aside from taking two Tylenol Sunday evening for a headache (once again, from the hot weather), he has taken nothing else post surgery. All systems are working well and now he's better than new. Literally!