My thoughts on what to bring to the hospital...

The scariest part of this surgery for me was the hospital.  I've never had surgery in a hospital, let alone spent any time there.  I scoured the internet looking for things I should bring with me.  And I brought them all - I packed my biggest suitcase for this trip because I just had no idea what I needed.  Well, I ended up needing next to nothing.

I think I thought I would be much more mobile than I was.  For over 48 hours I was flat on my back, no pillow, hooked up to all kinds of machines.  I didn't hardly move my hands.  So no need for magazines, crafts, or a pillow.  A dear friend sent me a bunch of little crafts to do and I was really excited to do them.  But like I said, I didn't move my hands let alone sit up enough to see anything but the ceiling.

No DVDs, no TV watching.  Literally, I did basically nothing.  Here is a list of things I would bring to the hospital if I knew then what I know now:

• the clothes that I wear to the hospital
• photo ID
• face wipes (I had Oil of Olay daily facials, they were a must)
• toothbrush and toothpaste
• My family

And that's it.  Once I was mobile enough to get the catheter out and get dressed, I was released.  My mom and dad did take turns reading me from the book I was reading, but I didn't stay awake long enough to get very far.  So that is my advice to anyone going in for decompression surgery, at least from my experience.

On another note, I kept a few of the staples from my incision - here's a photo of them compared to a regular staple from an office stapler.  I asked my bestie Erin if it was weird to keep the staples and she said yes but do it anyway.  So I did. 

They are M shaped because the tool used to removed them crimped them in the middle so they could come out.  There were 18 staples in all.  It was a lot, but I was glad there was so many so my incision didn't have a chance to open up at all.  The removal was very uncomfortable - it was like a pinch and a prick at the same time.  My incision is healing fine now, but it's kind of gross.  I mean, it's not infected or anything, it's just a bunch of skin and it's weird.