3 Months Post-Surgery

Unfortunately, less writing has been happening because I have been back to work for almost a month now and going to the gym quite often.

I feel fantastic; better than I have in almost 2 years. The only struggles I have is my scar is hypertrophic, my scar tissue can hurt and well, my skin is itchy. Otherwise, I am a happy person.

I see the surgeon for the last time till next year on the 8th. Hopefully I hear all good news. I have been doing my best to eat well and exercise at least 3-4 days a week. My job is not exactly easy, I am on my feet all day.

Certain foods seem to not settle well; which I know can be do to the surgery having been recent or my lack of gallbladder. For now, I eat what I used to eat and just be careful or cut out the foods that don’t sit well. Eating big heavy meals make me feel nauseous, so I am trying to eat smaller meals more often and chugging back water. It helps a lot.

When it comes to exercising post-surgery:

• Walking really helps. They tell you do that after surgery and I find that days I don’t exercise or go for a walk my abdomen gets stiff.
• Work on strengthening your abdomen. It sucks, but I find that I cannot lift all that much because my abdomen can’t support it.
• Don’t give up. I feel fantastic, but I know I have to draw the line and prevent myself from hurting.
• Don’t expect to feel 100%. I have difficulty with this. I want to be 100%, but as the hubby says I am about 80-90%.

For those that don’t know or remember, I had my incision split open. It put me back about 2 weeks, but it is no problem now. I am using bio-oil on the scar and have seen great improvement.

All I can say is stay positive and it’ll help. All I have to do is see what my liver and abdomen look like next year, more out of curiosity to see what it looks like.

Right Lobe Liver Resection Surgery and Recovery

I know I’ve been away from the blogging world, which is not a sign I have been writing or editing. I’ve been busy and very distracted. As the title states, I had major surgery Mar. 28th of this year. I got less than a weeks notice and jumped on it because I have been waiting for some sort of relief of pain since Nov. 2011 when I was first diagnosed with Focal Nodular Hyperplasia (FNH), a benign tumour, in the right side of my liver.

Since I was diagnosed with this I had to stop exercising, started taking strong pain medications, clearly had to stop drinking and it basically altered my way of living, which caused my hubby’s way of living to change as well.

The surgery went great as far as I know. The morning of was tough, had to be there at 6am to check in. My mom showed up, started to cry and laugh. Somewhat out of fear, but mainly out of joy. Seeing her cry made me  cry. We’ve all been through a lot, not just family but friends and coworkers of both my hubby and me. It was a relief.

I was brought into the OR just after 8am feeling confident. I received an epidural about mid-way through my back. Absolutely amazing thing. Yes, I was a little high, but still I made people smile and was reassured because everyone was confident.

My surgery was roughly 5.5 hours. I lost 3 litres of blood, causing me to get several blood transfusions. Otherwise, the surgery went great. I lost my entire right side of my liver, roughly 60-70% of my liver, my gallbladder and only 1 out of my 3 main veins, originally it was supposed to be 2. The believed cause of my pain was the FNH was pushing on my one vein and several nerves.

The only hospital complication I had was my epidural malfunctioned several times, causing me to cry in agony the day after surgery, otherwise it went pretty well. The nurses were amazing and they let my hubby do a bunch for me to help out. I was released from hospital Apr. 3rd and then complications set in.

On Apr. 7th, when my hubby and I were changing some of the falling apart medi-strips or steri-strips, like we were told to do so bacteria doesn’t set in, part of my incision on my right hand side opened up. We called the surgeon and was told to put more strips on it and place gauze over it and to wait to see him on Apr. 10th.

We saw him Apr. 10th, where the wound was roughly 5cm long and 1cm wide. He informed us this could happen and is called wound dehiscence. It was nothing to worry about and sent us on our way.

Within 48 hours (Apr. 12th), we had a close friend over and she noticed one of my strips around the bandage placed over my wound looked strange. I lifted part of the bandage to get a better look and saw that it looked green. I peeled off the bandage to check and saw that my wound was severely infected. She rushed my hubby and me to the hospital I had surgery at (roughly 1 hour away from my home). We had called the surgeon twice with no call back. Luckily I got seen by several of his interns. Unfortunately, they had to poke and prod and told me they could see to my muscles in one small hole, but it was not infected internally, only topographical. The wound had  grow to 10cm long and 1.5cm wide at the widest point (the rest of the incision on my right hand side had split open). They cleaned me, patched me up enough to be sent home to receive homecare after it was approved by my surgeon.

As of now the infection has cleared and I am getting great treatment. I am sorry about the graphic photos but this is what I’ve been dealing with personally and my family and friends have been witnessing. Honestly, without such great people helping me stay positive I wouldn’t be doing so well. Yes, my scar is going to be bigger and uglier, but I’ll be better and they won’t judge me. For those suffering with FNH it’s a struggle to get treatment and the recovery is just as hard. Other than my wound I feel fantastic, better than I have in over a year. This is my struggle as a Canadian, so I hope it helps others from Canada and around the world.

Size of the tumour in the right side of my liver.

24 Hours after surgery. Bloated so much I looked liked I was pregnant.

48 hours after surgery.

Apr. 10th, after I was seen by the surgeon. All the other images are too graphic.

Anyone struggling with FNH or wants more information feel free to email me at: meganheld@live.ca

Once again, I cannot thank my hubby, family, friends and coworkers of both my hubby and me. Amazing support, laughs and positivity. Without any of you this would not have been as easy to deal with. My recovery is going great because even if it hurts, I still laugh and smile. I owe you all so much…even if the mocking has come to an end (I was really moody/hormonal) I knew it was out of love and to make sure depression never plagued me.

The Great World of Authors

As I work on writing the sequel to The Selected and try to get myself in the mood to edit Control Me I have been terribly distracted by many things. Life, reading a bunch of novels that I downloaded from Smashwords Read and eBook week, which most are phenomenal. I have never been so amazed at all the talent out there and am glad I found that site.
For those that have ereaders we are able to find more writers that the world does not know about. Well, unless you work a minimum wage job and found out one of the most regular customers wrote a trilogy about the War of 1812. He leant me the books for a change of reading and well, I am happy to read them. The look on his face made my work week, plus I’ll learn something too.
Only downside is that I am going to be proud of his work and jealous of how talented he is. One day I may be a great writer; for now, I’ll just stick with what I am doing and be happy.
Talking about great writers, a fellow author/friend Dean Smith-Richard, whom I have featured on my blog before, posted about the terrible news of E.L. James writing a novel about writing advice: http://deanfortythree.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/monday-morning-randomness-5/
To me, she has nothing really to offer. I would love to read a novel, or even several posts on blogs about aspiring novelists and what advice they have to give. So, all the writers out there, time to give some advice and let me know what you would tell writers.
Mine: Don’t stress about word count or chapters. A book will chose all that for you. Write what you are thinking about and worry about that stuff later.

New Writing Phase/Genre Time

I am back to trying to edit again…not because I want to. Editing is my least favourite thing to do, especially when I have a novel that keeps screaming to be written and couple ideas running through my head.

I tend to go through phases of writing genres. I don’t know why and I wish I could explain it. It seems like I am going to be in a dystopia YA genre phase. I’m not complaining because it has me intrigued. The only complaint is more of a worry because it is a new genre. Sure, I’ve written one novel, but that is not enough.

It is easy to speculate about the future because so many things can happen. I think I am drawn to this genre because there will always be violence as the world changes. Also, most of what has been established will be changed. It’s intriguing to think of these concepts. It’s also as close to science fiction writing as I will get.

Have other writers gone through a phase similar to this? Or are most authors always in one genre and have never ventured?

Sorry for the short post, not much is new and I’m more distracted about my health issues. Update to come about that later.

Control Me Cover Reveal

I doubt I really need to say anything. Been busy writing my other book and figured this would give me drive to edit more.

Hope you all like. May be fixed before publication date.