Well, this day was pretty uneventful. I woke up about 7 and screwed around on the internet for a bit. Then a nurse comes in and tells me it's shower time. She unhooks me from the IV and covers my left hand in a plastic back then tapes it tight. I go take a shower without and problems, carefully scrubbing around the incisions. I still had a bunch of that yellow stuff that they put on you when you have incisions. I scrubbed like hell trying to get that crap off with only limited success. They provided shampoo but no conditioner which I didn't bring so my hair turned into the gnarliest puffball that I've ever had. I dry off and get dressed then walk the halls for a bit. When I come back, my "breakfast" was in my room. It consisted of a drinkable yogurt, watered-down apple juice, bottled water, and hot tea. The watered-down apple juice was nasty but the yogurt drink was quite nice.
It's a little before 10 now and another nurse comes in and tells me it's time to go. I was still plugging away at my "breakfast" when she came. Dr. Horacio came to see how I was doing and determined I was ready for discharge. (I forgot to mention that he visited me the night before. He was the assistant surgeon on the procedure. Dr. Rumbaut had to leave town right after the procedure to a bariatric conference in Cancun.) I started packing and I realized that I couldn't find my wallet or passport. She comes back a few minutes later and says "Vamanos!" and I tell her that I can't find my wallet or passport. I'm frantically searching everything, under the bed, under the couch, all my bags, etc. with no luck. She goes and starts making calls at the nurses station. I go through all my stuff yet again and I finally find them in a pocket of a pocket of my laptop bag. When we have a collective sigh of relief, I get all my bags and she leads me downstairs to the waiting shuttle driver. I make a pitstop at the gift shop before I leave since I wanted to send some postcards to everyone but they didn't have any so I head back to the hotel empty-handed.
Dr. Richard was waiting for me at the hotel when I got there to see how I was doing. I spent most of the remainder of the day killing time. I head back over to the H-E-B for another calling card since mine was basically used up. The second attempt to buy one was no less easy and I left the other card in the hotel so I couldn't just point to what I wanted. The rest of the day was occupied by surfing the net and watching TV.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Day 2, Surgery Day
Well, this day could have turned into another disaster. Since Dr. Rumbaut wanted me at the hospital at 7AM, I would have to take a taxi since the hotel doesn't offer shuttle rides that early. So the hotel arranges a taxi for me the night before and told me that he'd be there at 6:20AM. Well, I wake up at 5:40AM since my 5:30AM wake up call never came that I requested. I get ready in time and get to my cab. The driver first takes me to San Jose Hospital which I knew was wrong so I show him the printout I had with me saying that my surgery was at Christus Muguerza Hospital so he took me there. I go in and try to check in with the front desk. They have no idea who I am or who Dr. Rumbaut is. After about an hour after they made a bunch of calls, they determined that I needed to be at Christus Muguerza Sur Hospital. (Sur means south for those who don't understand Spanish.) So they call me a taxi and explain to him where I needed to go. He shows up in an unmarked taxi which I was like "oh great, I'm going to taken somewhere remote to be mugged" but I was too desperate to not take it. He gets me there with maneuvers that would put even the craziest New York City cabbie to shame.
Here are some pictures of the lobby of Christus Muguerza Sur Hospital.
I get there and go to the front counter. The lady starts checking me in then she calls a doctor who speaks English to translate for the info that she doesn't understand. The doctor then leads me to the elevator and up to the floor that I need to be on. They get me to a prep area, I guess you would call it, have me get out of my clothes, put on a gown, and lay on the bed. They take my wallet, passport, and cell phone and put in an envelope to take it somewhere for safe keeping. They get me hooked up to an IV, they wrap my calves in ace bandages to prevent blood clots, then wheel me down to the operating room. They have like a half dozen people waiting for me. They make me slide onto the operating table from the bed. Then they have me extend my right arm out. I assume this is to get it out of the way during surgery.
After that, I wake up in a recovery room feeling really drunk wondering where I was and what was going on. I had some pain in my chest area and my shoulders. The shoulder pain is interesting since it's a "referred" pain. The nerve that causes it is in my gut but my brain interpreted the pain as coming from my shoulders. After being in there a bit to basically sober up, I get taken to my actual room.
Here are some pics of my room.
I get settled in and get my laptop out since the hospital has free WiFi. Once I felt up to it, I made a couple of calls back to the States. Around dinner time, my "dinner" shows up consisting of some chicken broth, bottled water, and hot tea.
Everything goes down fine. After I eat, I walked the halls for a bit to prevent blood clots in my legs and since I was getting a little stir-crazy. Here are some pics that I took wandering around.
I finally get bored with that and go back to my room. The nurse comes and injects more pain medication in me through my IV and gives me a sleeping pill. That's how I ended my first day as a "bandster".
Here are some pictures of the lobby of Christus Muguerza Sur Hospital.
I get there and go to the front counter. The lady starts checking me in then she calls a doctor who speaks English to translate for the info that she doesn't understand. The doctor then leads me to the elevator and up to the floor that I need to be on. They get me to a prep area, I guess you would call it, have me get out of my clothes, put on a gown, and lay on the bed. They take my wallet, passport, and cell phone and put in an envelope to take it somewhere for safe keeping. They get me hooked up to an IV, they wrap my calves in ace bandages to prevent blood clots, then wheel me down to the operating room. They have like a half dozen people waiting for me. They make me slide onto the operating table from the bed. Then they have me extend my right arm out. I assume this is to get it out of the way during surgery.
After that, I wake up in a recovery room feeling really drunk wondering where I was and what was going on. I had some pain in my chest area and my shoulders. The shoulder pain is interesting since it's a "referred" pain. The nerve that causes it is in my gut but my brain interpreted the pain as coming from my shoulders. After being in there a bit to basically sober up, I get taken to my actual room.
Here are some pics of my room.
I get settled in and get my laptop out since the hospital has free WiFi. Once I felt up to it, I made a couple of calls back to the States. Around dinner time, my "dinner" shows up consisting of some chicken broth, bottled water, and hot tea.
Everything goes down fine. After I eat, I walked the halls for a bit to prevent blood clots in my legs and since I was getting a little stir-crazy. Here are some pics that I took wandering around.
I finally get bored with that and go back to my room. The nurse comes and injects more pain medication in me through my IV and gives me a sleeping pill. That's how I ended my first day as a "bandster".
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Day 1 of Mexico, Part 2
This picture is from the drive on the way to Dr. Rumbaut's office. There must be elections coming up since half the billboards has campaign ads on them. These people on stilts appeared to be passing out flyers for some candidate.
Other than that, I arrive to Dr. Rumbaut's office uneventfully. His office is very nice and sleek. He was with some other patients and I had to fill out some paperwork while him and Dr. Richard were with other people. I meet with Dr. Richard first, who is Dr. Rumbaut's assistant. He is a younger guy and a cool guy. He spent a couple years as an exchange student in Oklahoma. He interviews me and talks about the procedure. He gives me a book prepared by Dr. Rumbaut with everything you need to know post-operation. He also gives me a "gift box" with Gatorade, bottled water, tea packets, Splenda, Isopure protein drink, Augmentin(antibiotic), and Norflex(muscle relaxer) to use after hospital discharge while I'm in Mexico.
I then meet with Dr. Rumbaut. He shows me a Power Point of the procedure and asked if I had any questions. I didn't since I've researched this to death. He spent part of his childhood in Akron, Ohio so we spent more time talking about how he likes the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Cleveland Browns and baseball more than anything else.
Once I'm done, I wait for the hotel shuttle to pick me up. I get picked up and arrive at the hotel uneventfully. While I check in, I buy $20USD worth of Pesos. The hotel was exchanging them at $12.50MXN to $1USD. After I get my room and get situated, I decide to wander to the H-E-B to get a calling card and to look around. This place was a foodie's paradise! I so wish I could have tried some of the meats and cheeses that they had in their deli section and the seafood at the seafood counter.
Zucaritas, Son grandes!
I looked all over the place for calling cards since they are usually displays of calling cards, gift cards and the like at grocery stores in the US. Since H-E-B is an American-owned grocery chain, I figured that that would be the case but it wasn't the case. I finally figured out that I had to get one from the cashier. I get in line and try to ask for a calling card and since I speak like 10-15 words of Spanish and that the cashier didn't speak any English, I was struggling. Luckily, a guy about 18-20 was right behind me and spoke English, he translated and told the cashier what I wanted and finally got my $100MXN calling card which is about $8USD which gave me about 130 minutes of talk time to the US. I got back to the hotel and called it an evening. That concludes my first day of the trip.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Day 1 of Mexico, Part 1
Well, the past three days have been a long journey. Wednesday morning I woke up at 4AM to get ready since my flight out of Birmingham was at 6:55. By the time I got through security at the airport (they didn't like my bottle of aloe (for my sunburn from swimming Tuesday), they just started boarding the plane. This was also due to American Airlines' computer system being down for like 15 minutes so I couldn't check in right away. I requested an exit row seat at check in which I got. When the boarding agent saw my boarding pass, he said he had a better place to sit and changed my ticket. I was like "great, that's nice". When I get to the seat, however, it's the first row right after first class which has no where to store a laptop bag and since there where no seats directly in front of that row, the tray tables come out of the middle arm rest which meant the middle armrest doesn't folds up. I was like "oh shit!". There isn't enough Crisco in the world to get me to fit in that seat. I notified a flight attendant and she told me to go speak with the boarding agent again since she didn't know what seats were open. So I ran back up the tunnel and told the gate agent and he reassigned me to the last row of the plane which only had an aisle and window seat which was good. The only drawback was the engines where right on the other side of the window and that the bathrooms were right next to me.
Once I got settled in, the flight was uneventful. I mentioned to the flight attendant sitting near me for takeoff that I was going to Mexico for to get a Lapband and he mentioned that he had a family member who had full gastric bypass and that they lost a ton of weight. He was real nice and wished me the best of luck.
We land in Dallas/Fort Worth early so the gate wasn't ready for us; we had to sit in the plane 15-20 minutes until we could get to the gate. We deplane and I find the monitors with the departures and discover that the flight to Monterrey departs from another terminal on the other side of the airport. I catch the tram and get to the gate uneventfully.
The picture above was taken before any announced delays. First we get an announcement stating that there was a maintenance delay on the plane. Then we get another about having to do an international flight security check. I'm frantically trying to reach the patient coordinator and the doctor's office in Monterrey to let them know of the delay so I can still make my pre-ops that day and so the taxi driver isn't waiting there for hours unnecessarily. Finally, they stated that the plane had a cracked windshield and that they had to find another plane. They finally have another plane for us but it's like 10 gates down so everyone heads down to that gate like a herd of cattle. We eventually take of at 11:44AM, the time we were supposed to land in Monterrey. I had the same seat issue on this flight so they put me in the same row but the other side so once we took off, the rest was uneventful.
Getting through customs and immigration was easy other than most of the forms they had were Spanish only. I got help on the plane for some of them and for the swine flu form they hand you when you get off the plane, I got help in the immigration line. Once I got past customs, I saw my driver holding the sign with my name on it; I felt special. Too bad I was carrying too much crap to stop and take a picture. Below are some pics of the outside of the airport when I was waiting for the driver to get the car and pics on the way to the cardiologist. The Home Depot pic was taken especially for my dad, btw.
The driver takes me to the cardiologist's office and the door is locked! I frantically call the Surgery Center's office and finally reached someone who speaks English and explained what was going on. They finally reach someone and said that they'll be there in ten minutes; they said that they will call back in 10-15 minutes to see if everything is ok. The medical assistant/nurse/secretary lady shows up about 10 minutes later and starts with drawing three viles of blood for the blood work. She then does an EKG on me. Then she does a chest X-ray. The cardiologist shows up and interviews me to make sure I have no preexisting problems to prevent me from having surgery and to make sure that I don't have a case of the crazies. He then does some breathing tests on me with his stethoscope and says I'm good to go. The lady calls for the hotel shuttle to take me to Dr. Rumbaut's office. Below are some scenic pics that I took from the windows while waiting for the cardiologist's office to open.
Well, I am getting tired and hungry so I will post Part 2 later...
Once I got settled in, the flight was uneventful. I mentioned to the flight attendant sitting near me for takeoff that I was going to Mexico for to get a Lapband and he mentioned that he had a family member who had full gastric bypass and that they lost a ton of weight. He was real nice and wished me the best of luck.
We land in Dallas/Fort Worth early so the gate wasn't ready for us; we had to sit in the plane 15-20 minutes until we could get to the gate. We deplane and I find the monitors with the departures and discover that the flight to Monterrey departs from another terminal on the other side of the airport. I catch the tram and get to the gate uneventfully.
The picture above was taken before any announced delays. First we get an announcement stating that there was a maintenance delay on the plane. Then we get another about having to do an international flight security check. I'm frantically trying to reach the patient coordinator and the doctor's office in Monterrey to let them know of the delay so I can still make my pre-ops that day and so the taxi driver isn't waiting there for hours unnecessarily. Finally, they stated that the plane had a cracked windshield and that they had to find another plane. They finally have another plane for us but it's like 10 gates down so everyone heads down to that gate like a herd of cattle. We eventually take of at 11:44AM, the time we were supposed to land in Monterrey. I had the same seat issue on this flight so they put me in the same row but the other side so once we took off, the rest was uneventful.
Getting through customs and immigration was easy other than most of the forms they had were Spanish only. I got help on the plane for some of them and for the swine flu form they hand you when you get off the plane, I got help in the immigration line. Once I got past customs, I saw my driver holding the sign with my name on it; I felt special. Too bad I was carrying too much crap to stop and take a picture. Below are some pics of the outside of the airport when I was waiting for the driver to get the car and pics on the way to the cardiologist. The Home Depot pic was taken especially for my dad, btw.
The driver takes me to the cardiologist's office and the door is locked! I frantically call the Surgery Center's office and finally reached someone who speaks English and explained what was going on. They finally reach someone and said that they'll be there in ten minutes; they said that they will call back in 10-15 minutes to see if everything is ok. The medical assistant/nurse/secretary lady shows up about 10 minutes later and starts with drawing three viles of blood for the blood work. She then does an EKG on me. Then she does a chest X-ray. The cardiologist shows up and interviews me to make sure I have no preexisting problems to prevent me from having surgery and to make sure that I don't have a case of the crazies. He then does some breathing tests on me with his stethoscope and says I'm good to go. The lady calls for the hotel shuttle to take me to Dr. Rumbaut's office. Below are some scenic pics that I took from the windows while waiting for the cardiologist's office to open.
Well, I am getting tired and hungry so I will post Part 2 later...
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
One week to go...
So a week from today I will be in Monterrey to get prepped for my surgery. I'm on day three of the liquid diet right now and I really miss real food. I went to the bank today and got the cashiers checks for the surgery so that is taken care of. I just need to call Verizon and find out about the costs to use my phone in Mehico in case of an emergency.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Two days until the dreaded diet
So I start the dreaded pre-op diet Monday. I have five days of "full liquids" and then five days of "clear liquids". Full liquids include Jello, light yogurt, skim milk, tomato soup, etc. Clear liquids are things like broth, tea, sugar free popsicles, Crystal light, and the like. I will also have to drink 2-3 protein shakes a day. The goal of this crazy diet is to shrink my liver in order for the surgery to be easier and have a lower risk of complications. After the surgery, I will be on the full liquid diet for a month. I can slowly after a couple weeks start adding things like mashed potatoes, sugar-free pudding, scrambled eggs, etc. The next six weeks are going to suck!
Sunday, May 24, 2009
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