I am one itchy bitchy

I'm alive, and doing well. Thank you to everyone who has checked in on me. :-)

The surgery went fine. When I woke up, I was in much more pain than I expected. After 2 hits of morphine and a couple of percocet, I was at least able to converse without gritting my teeth, clawing the bedrails, and whimpering.

I stayed on a steady, every 6 hour diet of 800mg ibuprofen and percocet until today. As of today, I went down to just the ibuprofen and since I slept right through my midday dose, I've just had it at 6am and 6pm. So far, so good. I definitely feel a little more sore today without the "good" drugs, but it's not bad at all.

Know what is bad? Forgetting that you are WILDLY allergic to steri strips. Ugh. After my last c-section, I had a horrible reaction and ended up with a near-full body rash before we figured out that's what was going on. This time I did remember -- as I was laying in recovery. Um, that's a little too late.

It took about a week for the rashes to blister up nice and itchy last time, so I figured I would be fine. But apparently it gets worse each time you use them, so this round hit me much earlier. By yesterday, the itching completely eclipsed the pain and it nearly drove me off the deep end.

After a consult with the surgeon (via phone) today, we decided to just take the steri strips off and use band aids. The incisions are barely closed, so it's sort of scary to be cruising around with nothing really holding them together, but when the alternative is to have a thick, blistering, insanity-producing rash instead, I'll risk it.

I took 2 benadryl today around lunchtime and practically lapsed into a coma for 3 hours. The nap was great, and blissfully itch-free. But wow, I guess I can't snarf 2 of those and hope to function. At all.

LJ asked me to post some incision pictures for Show and Tell. I'll do that, but in the meantime, here is what you look like when you're allergic to steri strips. Good times.

First, a diagram of where the 4 incisions are. One near my sternum in the middle, one near the edge of my ribcage toward the right edge, one on my right side a couple of inches above my hip, and one inside my belly button.

Now, as I said, around each incision site is angry and blistered where the steri strips where. This is a shot of the one near my sternum and the one midway down my torso. Gee, think you can figure out *exactly* where those little bastard steri strips were attached?

Here's a shot of the middle one, and the one that's sort of above my hip:

I can't get a clear picture of the madness going on inside my belly button, but you get the gist from this fuzzy, gross picture:

And, lastely, here is a decent closeup so you can really appreciate the individual blisters that comprise the affected areas. Fun, no?

It's 9:30 and I can hear the benadryl calling my name. "Leeeeeee-uh, Leeeeee-uh..." Oh, I'm comin' baby, I'm a-comin'.