5 years 2 months 17 days

Day 1904. Last night I did something very unusual before going to bed - I actually watched a movie from 8 to 10 pm. Then I went to bed. And I slept really well, even though I had to run to the bathroom a lot with the cyst pushing on my bladder and after having had laxatives.

At 4:30 am they already woke me up for the colon cleanse. It was my first one ever. Thankfully it was the nice nurse, and not the mean one, who did it. She put two bottles of liquid in my butt and I had to hold it in for 10 minutes. I set my timer on my phone for it but could barely make it that long before I ran to the bathroom to let it out. Then I lay back down and they gave me an IV with salt water as I'd had to stop drinking at midnight. At some point I fell asleep again.

At 6:30 or so they woke me up as it was time to be taken to the wake-up room. A nice man wheeled me in my bed to the elevator and to level 9, where the operating rooms are. Then I was put into the wake-up room, together with other patients about to be operated. I must have stayed there for nearly an hour. The anesthesiologist came by to ask me the same questions again he had already asked me on the phone. When it was time, another nice and funny man wheeled me away to the operating room.

I had to be transferred to the operating table, but the bed mechanism to move it up to the same level wasn't working. And so they brought another operating table that they lifted up to my height, and I had to climb over to it and lay down there. They took my hospital robe off and covered me with a blanket. I was naked underneath. Then they wheeled me into the operating room.

The first thing I noticed was how cold it was in there. And there were a lot of people. The nice lady doctor who had talked to me two weeks ago about how they'd do the operation came up to me and talked to me. Then the anesthesiologist put a mask on my mouth and moments later I was asleep.

They had said the operation would take between 1 and 8 hours, and the longer the worst the outcome. My first memory is of people calling my name and moving me, but I immediately fell back asleep. After a while I woke up again, but only listened to what was going on around me. My eyes were still heavy, but I started opening them up more and more often. When somebody came by, I asked them what time it was. They said 2:15 pm which had me concerned. But I had to be patient to find out what had happened. They said I'd be in the wake-up room for another hour.

At 3:15 pm a man came to wheel me up to my room. When we reached the elevators and waited there, the nice lady doctor came up to me and told me that the cyst had been benign and that I only had three holes in my belly because they used the Da Vinci robot to get it out. I asked her why the operation had taken 5.5 hours. She said it was because the cyst had grown very attached due to the infection, so it took a long time to detach it and get it out. That growth is also what made it look malignant to the doctors before the operation. I thanked her, and the guy wheeled me into the elevator. Tears of relief and thankfulness to God ran down my cheeks.

I was wheeled to my room. It was 3:30 pm, and I knew I had to immediately make some calls. While I had locked up all my valuables as told, I had left my phone in the drawer by my bed so I could get it out right away. I called Randy first, and he was very relieved to hear the news. Everyone had been worried because the operation was taking so long and they had no news. Then I called my Mom, and then my brother. Then I let my faithful friend know, who's come to the hospital with me a few times and was gonna be the only visitor today. There was a lot of traffic, so it was 5:30 pm before she finally walked into my room.

It was great to see her again, and we ended up talking for two hours. In fact, she made me talk a lot. She left at 7:30, and I was getting rather tired. I turned my computer on to work on the pictures and write my blog. I finished with the pictures, but by 8:30 I was too tired to keep going and turned my computer off. I was going to go to sleep, by my stomach was complaining that I hadn't had any food since 1 pm on Sunday. A nurse had told me that I could eat something tonight, so I asked for some food. They actually still had my dinner plate that they gave to me. There was a salad, some ham, a piece of bread and a bread roll. They had already told me all I wasn't allowed to eat for the next week, as I have a lot of gas inside me right now. So no salads or fruits and many more. I ate the cremed pumpkin soup even though I didn't like the taste, then put the ham in the bread roll and ate a few bites. It wasn't much, but it must have been a bite too much as I felt extremely full and uncomfortable. And the tiredness was gone. I could not sleep. At midnight I finally fell asleep for the first time, but I was up constantly with discomfort/pain, and I was tired of lying on my back. Plus, I had eletronic thrombosis stockings that massaged my legs and the noise was rather annoying. And so it was a terrible and long night of little sleep.

Back home, a parent from church came to take Emmy to soccer practice, while Randy went to ballet class with the other two. And we had a video call at bed time again, so the kids could see Mommy and go to bed.