Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Recovery from surgery on small intestine

It's now been 10 weeks since my surgery to remove 10 inches from my small intestine. As I look back on the recovery process a few things stand out:

1. I lost more weight than I expected (about 10 pounds total) and it took several weeks to steadily build up energy.
2. the worst part of the recovery was the first two weeks dealing with incision pain when I coughed ...
3. it took about 6 weeks before I could swing a golf club easily and attempt to play tennis.
4. it took about 8 weeks before I was able to play golf and tennis normally.
5. even in the past two weeks I still feel some incision discomfort but it's minor. The discomfort seems to move a bit and comes and goes although it's pretty mild at this point.
6. getting my full energy back has been a steady process. I was surprised how debilitating the surgery and 3 night stay in the hospital was on my energy level --- I remember walking 18 holes of golf after 3 weeks and was extremely tired afterward.
7. the digestive process and bowel movements from the first week on have been quite normal which has surprised me. I have been able to eat anything from the day I left the hospital. I did supplement my diet drinking Ensure "milk shakes" to take in more calories as I wanted to gain back the weight.

The incisions are still quite visible --- there are 3 small (1/2 inch) incisions that are still noticeably reddish, and about a 2 1/2 inch main incision above my belly button that is also reddish. I can feel a minor discomfort when pressing on them even now.

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