I'm sorry this has taken so long. Things have been pretty crazy since the surgery. Because we had to extend our stay in Oki, we had to extend our hotel room, but weren't able to stay in the same room the rest of the time. So the morning after Ben's surgery I had to go back and move all our stuff over to the next room. Then we had issues with the internet in the new room, and for some reason I couldn't get it on my computer so we were just using Ben's. But anyway, here's the post-op report:
Like I said in the last post, they ended up keeping Ben overnight just for observation. Not a huge deal. It was just because of the location of the thing they wanted to make sure they hadn't damaged the bowel or anything. We spent the day at the hospital, and when the dr came back that evening he gave us the ok to head back to the hotel. He was still hurting, but could already kind of tell it was not the same pain as before, so that was a good sign. We got all the discharge stuff taken care of and headed back to the hotel.
That was his belly Wednesday night after leaving the hospital. It really wasn't as bad as it looked. We were able to take the coverings off the next morning and the steri-strips eventually fell off on their own. Needless to say we didn't do much the next few days. It was Saturday evening before he left the room again, and that was just down to the car to go with me to get dinner from the drive-thru at Popeye's. Sunday he did a little more. We went and walked around the PX and the bazaar a little bit. Wore him out pretty good, but he was getting bored in the hotel room. Monday afternoon we went back for his post-op appointment with the dr. Everything looked great. He's still sore from the surgery but it is definitely not the same pain as before. So the doctor gave us the ok to head home. He said if anything was going to happen it would have happened by then, seeing how it was a week since his surgery. So he gave us some more percocet for the trip and we were able to leave. Granted it took us a while to get back, but that will be another post.
This is one of the surgery pictures. It's not the best copy (I'll try to get them scanned and post them that way), but that is what has caused my husband so much pain for the past year. This epiploic appendagitis. Basically everyone has hundreds of these little fatty nodule type things around the colon area. And what happened was for some reason or another the blood supply gets cut off and it's not able to drain the blood that goes in. So it gets all irritated and inflamed and whatnot, and it's really painful. And because this thing is so angry it starts messing with every thing else around it. Most of the time it can just be taken care of with anti-inflammatories. But we had been doing that and it just really wasn't working. That's when they go in and cut them out. The dr sent it to pathology and it came back benign (which we figured it would) so there's nothing to worry about there. I asked if it was possible for this to happen again, and he said it is. It's extremely rare for it to happen in the first place, but it's possible. But if it does happen again, we'll know what to look for.
Ben is doing a somewhat better now that we're home. Back on our couch where he can recline, our bed that isn't like sleeping on a rock slab, and just being home in general.
I took this pic of his belly tonight. He's healing up nicely. He'll have a good scar on his right side and his belly button (but he already had one there), but the one on his left side looks great. He's had the past couple days off and will go back to work Monday. We stopped in his office Wednesday for a little bit and while everyone has happy to see him, they all kept saying how he should be home resting. So we'll see how next week goes.
Thank you again for all the prayers, thoughts, notes, etc. They are much appreciated. We are so happy and relieved to finally have an answer for this. It's been a long time waiting. We are so impressed with the doctors down in Okinawa who were finally able to get it figured out and fixed. Now it's just the waiting game until he's feeling fully better and back to his old self. Hopefully it's not much longer. :)
It all looks decent, right? And for the most part it was. She only ordered a couple questionable things. Most of it was different pieces of beef, chicken, and veggies. Look at that picture above though. In the upper left hand corner. Can you guess what that is? It's tongue. Cow tongue. As disgusting as that sounds, it was alright. Not saying I would eat it again, but it wasn't horrid. 
