July 30, 2019: Occipital Nerve Decompression Surgery

We arrived bright and early at the surgery center and went through all the pre-surgical paperwork, etc. I was brought back to pre-op where I got my IV, was given a Scopolamine patch for nausea, spoke to different nurses, the anesthesia team, my surgeon, etc. My surgeon (Dr. Perry) is so particular about everything that he made the pre-op nurse change the direction the IV tubing was taped to my hand. The surgical nurse (who has been working with him for years) smiled and said he has this down to a science. 

  

Shaun gave me a kiss and watched me walk to the operating room with the OR nurse.  She told Shaun that she would call him every hour with an update.

I spent 6 hours in the OR.

 

I woke up with my hair shaved from the top of my ears down, 3 incisions in a "T" formation, a drain, and a pump giving me a continuous dose of pain medications that I will have for a week. I don’t remember much when waking up from anesthesia other than feeling pretty nauseated. Shaun and my dad were there with me, and they took some flattering pictures of how swollen my face/lips/chin were from laying on my stomach so long. They said I answered all the questions the nurse asked, even the ones that were directed at Shaun. 

 

I went home about 6pm and snuck upstairs without my kids seeing me. I made myself comfortable in a reclining chair in my room, put a compression device on my legs, and put on a cooling mask on my head that I rented from my surgeon’s office for the next week.  The cooling mask is like an icepack for your entire head, but it is attached to a device that continuously delivers cold water at a perfect temperature to reduce swelling and give comfort, but not cause any damage that an ice pack could cause. The danger of ice packs after this surgery is that your head is completely numb, so you could cause a burn from the ice and have no idea.  If you use an ice pack on your head, they want you to also put one on your leg so that when your leg starts to burn, it means the skin on your head is also burning. Plus getting new ice packs every hour would be very inconvenient. Renting this machine made recovery so much more bearable. 

 

The rest of the day is pretty fuzzy, I don’t remember a lot other than feeling groggy. I wasn’t in any pain, my head just felt “tight”. I just had some difficulty finding a comfortable position. 

Dr. Perry called Shaun to give him an update on what he found during surgery. He said I had exactly the anatomy he expected, and that he had to decompress 25 nerves. That means there were 25 places along my occipital nerves that were pinched or damaged that needed to be fixed. He said I definitely needed this surgery.

(I will explain more about what it means to decompress a nerve after my 1 week post-op appointment with Dr. Perry where he explains things in greater detail)