Pre-Op Visit

I had my pre-op appointment with Dr. Meltzer this morning.  I first met with Michelle, one of Dr. Meltzer's staff, to go over the bag of goodies. 

The bag included a mirror, airline neck cushion (for sitting on), white robe, feminine pads, bacitracin, douche kit, colace, arnica, 3x disposable underwear, and the dreaded prep bottle.

After we went over the bag, she started to talk about the time of the surgery.  Originally, I was scheduled for April 20th, then moved up to April 12 for some reason.  For the past few months, I was scheduled for the 7:30am surgery and had to be at Greenbaum by 5:30am.  Early!  Within the past week, I had been pushed to the 1:30pm surgery with a report time of 11:30.  Honestly, I wanted the early surgery because then I wouldn't have to sit around even longer without anything in my stomach.

When we were in Dr. Meltzer's reception area, though, we heard one patient telling Dr. Meltzer's staff that she was having concerns about her early surgery time.  We hoped she was currently before us, because I wanted the early spot.

Sure enough, Michelle says we've been moved back up to the 7:30am spot.  I told her that the early time was good and we'd heard the other patient had concerns.

After that, Dr. Meltzer came in, took a look at my vagina again, probed the hole a little, and then drew lines on my stomach where he would be taking the skin graft.  We chatted a little about the surgery and he described very basically what he would be doing which would hopefully resolve this constant discharge issue.

I was supposed to be on clear liquids the day before surgery, but they also said I could have one bottle of Ensure for each meal.  They said no dairy, but when I looked at the ingredients for Ensure, it says it has milk in it.  I love my morning English Breakfast tea latte, and since Starbucks is right next to Dr. Meltzer's office, I figured a little bit of dairy that morning wouldn't hurt since they were allowing Ensure throughout the day.  I told myself that I wouldn't have any more dairy or Ensure the rest of the day.  I also got a tall instead of a grande.

With midday rapidly approaching and the 5:30pm start time for the bowel prep, there wasn't much time to do anything major like drive to the Grand Canyon and look around.  Instead, we decided to chill, catch a movie, and then walk around before my wife ate dinner.

Finally, the time came to start the bowel prep.  I had already been drinking my fluids throughout the afternoon, so I downed the bowel prep right on time and then continued to drink fluids as listed in the notes.  Just like before, I started having bowel movements within an hour after drinking the prep solution.  By the time I was ready to insert the suppository at 9pm tonight, it felt like I was starting to wind down.  I inserted it, anyway, and waited for the last stuff to come out.  I was getting tired and my wife was ready for bed, so I did my last dump and now I'm heading to bed.  I'm setting the alarm for 4:30am.

ADDENDUM:
Rather than write about what happened between bedtime and surgery in another post, I figured I would add on here.

I woke up around 12:30am that night with a horrible stomach ache.  It was really bad.  I went to the toilet and basically sat there hoping the feeling would go away.  After about 5 minutes but what seemed like forever, a ton of fluids gushed from my bowels.  I felt better, but not great.  I wiped, then stood up, but I still felt bad.  I started to see stars, which seems like the prelude to passing out.  I made it back to the toilet and sat there again for what seemed like forever.  Finally, more fluids gushed from my bowels and I finally felt decent enough to go back to bed.

I woke up again around 2:30am to have more fluids gush from my bowels, but it was 100 times less extreme than the 12:30am adventure.  Still, that 12:30am episode was one of the worst feelings I have had my entire life.