Fistulotomy part 5

It is now the end of Thursday, one full week post-op. Today was a total breeze. Very little impairment to movement. It's hard to believe that it's been one week to the night that I was in surgery and recovery with gauze crammed up my butt and barely able to move.

Over the past week, I've done the sitz baths absolutely religiously, and I think the water had a lot to do with helping my skin to heal, even though so little is exposed in that area. I've experimented with rationing of the diet and sleeping on one side, etc, but I think time has just had to be the savior of it all. I did have another BM tonight and I was dreading it again, but I suspected it would be not quite as murderous as the previous ones, and I was right. The stinging afterward was definitely still there, but that's only because I've had to push to get the feces out of the hole. Three wetted, wedged piece of toilet paper later, I was laying on the side with the fan blowing on me again. I think the burning is now more on the part of the hemorrhoidectomy than the fistulotomy. The hemorrhoidectomy will take longer to heal, I think, even though the fistulotomy is what left me pretty much incapacitated for four to five days post-op. It feels as if the fistuolotomy incision has really begun to scar over.

Today I was able to sit up a lot more and concentrate on other things beside jockeying myself in and out of chairs. It was nice. I also started valuing just normal living.

I'm glad I was able to work just a teeny tiny bit from home this week. Keeping my presence felt at work was nice for me.

This blog won't be too long because it really doesn't need to be. I think the recovery process is pretty much past the tough part now, though complications could still arise. I'm not suspecting any. However, I've been wrong before.

I have mostly stopped taking the potentially addicting Hydrocodone pills. I woke up this morning and felt weird, and I thought my body might be going through a very minor form of dependency or something. But I went back to sleep and oddly, slept until 2pm! Way too late, but I figured, hey, I'm recovering, I'll let my body do what it needs to do. I'm still taking the anti-inflammatory meds (ibuprofen) just to make sure the wounds heal faster.