Well, technically yesterday was two weeks post-op but I wasn't exactly feeling like blogging the past few days. I'm pretty sure I mentioned a few days ago that I had a little tickle in my throat and had coughed a few times. Monday my cough got worse, not too bad but coughing 2-3 times an hour is a lot when it feels like your abs are on fire every time! Tuesday morning I woke up and I was freezing... So it took my temperature and it was 103!! My cough was much worse and I had no appetite and generally felt quite crappy. After double checking my incisions for redness and heat indicating infection I called my surgeon and let him know what was happening. He sent a prescription to the pharmacy right away for an antibiotic and cough syrup. I was taking 1000mg of Tylenol and my fever never dropped below 102. Finally at 4pm I ended up calling my surgeon again because my fever had spiked up to 104!! The doctor had me come in immediately and checked my incisions and checked for seroma (pocket of fluid in the abdomen), at this point I was feeling faint if I stood up for more than a minute. He decided that the fever was at least not related to my surgery and was some kind of chest infection, and I was reacting worse than normal because I was still healing from the surgery. He told me to continue the antibiotics and asked me to start taking ibuprofen for the fever. Normally I wouldn't be allowed ibuprofen for a few more weeks after surgery because of bleeding risks, but at this point reducing my fever was more important than the slight bleeding risk. Even with the ibuprofen it took my temperature a few hours to drop below 104. During the night I kept waking up coughing and choking on phlegm. By Wednesday morning my temperature was a nice cool 101, and as the day went on it returned to normal. I did have issue all morning of feeling dizzy and nauseated, and at one point the nausea and coughing collided and caused vomiting... Sooo NOT FUN. At least by the evening I felt better other than the occasional random cough.
Other than being sick my recovery has been going well, I haven't really needed meds for pain anymore and I'm almost standing straight. I'm still a little hunched, but only someone who looked closely would notice. This morning I actually felt well enough to start following my doctors suggestion (from before I got sick) to start slowly taking walks. I only walked around the block and it felt good to be out, I probably could have gone further but especially after the past few days I didn't want to overdo it and honestly it was HOT, almost 90 degrees at 8am. That's Arizona for you!
Here are a few progress pictures for comparison-
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