Recovering

So… after my surgery, I had a patch to stop nausea. 24 hours after I took off the patch, I had the worst nausea ever. And nothing helped, not even the other nausea medicine they gave me.

The doctors all shrugged and said it must still be the anesthesia (three days later…) even though it wears off in 24 hours. They said put on another patch…

I went into Google Ninja mode and found out that the drug I was on (the patch) has a very well documented history of causing severe rebound withdrawal which can last for weeks or up to months. It’s even on the freaking drug website! When you type in scopolamine, “withdrawal” pops up in suggested searches. It’s bad. So bad.

I spent half of Saturday night dry heaving in the bathroom. I was so nauseous I couldn’t stand anyone talking… the sound of voices made me heave. I have generally felt slightly better in the mornings, so I fell into a routine of eating as much as I could handle in the mornings before the nausea hit, then lying around the rest of the day too sick to even read (focusing my eyes made me more sick).

I kept calling my doctors and no one had a solution, so I finally went deep Google one morning when I could stand to read for a few minutes and found that a lot of people were able to get off of the Scopolamine using meclizine. Great. I didn’t have meclizine. I had zofran which was doing shit for the nausea. So I told Sir I needed meclizine and he suggested I call my doctors the next day to get a prescription.

Then I found out… meclizine is the active ingredient in over the counter Dramamine – the seasickness drug. I dragged my ass to Walgreens and bought a box (Sir had to go back to work on Monday, so I’ve been on my own all week.) Wednesday I started taking meclizine. The goal is to start at a large dose then slowly ramp down the dosage to ween off the drug. Meclizine works on the same pathways as scopolamine, apparently, so it can work as a surrogate during withdrawal.

Today I took quarter tablets every six hours, and I’m feeling only vaguely nauseous every so often.

It’s been… 10 days since my surgery and I’m just now finally starting to recover from the freaking anti-nausea drug. So not worth it.

But… it’s also been hard to recover my routines. Like really fucking hard. And I know partly I’ve been pukey sick, which, yeah… things weren’t getting done around the house. But the last two days I’ve had the meclizine and been more functional, but still spent the whole day playing games on my phone.

But, I feel like, I spent ten days doing nothing. I know I was recovering, but… I could have done SOME things. I did nothing. I didn’t cook. I didn’t clean. I didn’t do laundry. I barely took a shower and put on clean clothes every day. It was rough.

And DJ pretty much let me do nothing. I was uncomfortable and unhappy, and he left me alone. Which I appreciated for the time when I needed that. But the past few days we went into a weird transition where… it’s been… months… that I’ve been sick. I started heavy bleeding in March… and didn’t stop. I have been through so many doctor’s appointments and procedures and PTSD and stress and worry and anxiety. Shit has been a mess. And our relationship has gotten ill-defined over the course of all of this. Appropriately, DJ has been less forceful about a lot of things for several months. Our physical play and punishment have basically ceased for months. Even non-physical dominance became hit and miss and pretty much disappeared in the last few weeks before the surgery because my PTSD was running so high all the time that it just wasn’t working. He’s been there for me in all the other ways, and he’s awesome and amazing, and so is sub brother. But that aspect of our relationship has been very much on hold for a long time.

Coming out of this surgery, I think I finally had it behind me, and lost the focal point that it had provided when it was looming. I was on a schedule before. Things had to be done… “before surgery.” I had to have all of my ducks in a row, all of my laundry washed, all of my meals prepared, everything ready to go because I didn’t know how long I’d be down after the surgery. The time leading up to the surgery was almost frantic and any gaps were so filled with anxiety over the approach that… I didn’t have a lot of time to breathe.

Then… it was over.

And I lost… my focal point.

And Sir wasn’t really Sir.

And I just… became… lost. For about a week.

So… Tuesday, I talked to Sir about it and he agreed I needed to start doing a few tasks each day while he is at work.

On Wednesday I had a very short list, but I failed to do it. I also failed his one major rule right now – no looking up medical procedures on the internet (I’ve currently completely terrified myself about the breast cancer gene, mastectomies, oophorectomies, colonoscopies, colonics, hemorrhoid surgery, mammograms, and IUD insertions [even though mine was inserted already – under general anesthesia]).

I talked to my therapist on Wednesday afternoon.

She suggested I should be punished for breaking the rules. I’ve clearly converted her completely.

I talked to Sir and we reinstated punishment, and rules, and expectations, and dominance… and today he stayed home with me and we did boot camp.

This post is my last task for the day.

I’m exhausted.

But it is deeply comforting to have my relationship coming back online again after so long and so much upheaval.

Tomorrow, I’ll write about boot camp. 😉