I grew attached to my belly button over the past thirty-two years. I’m shocked to announce that it seems to have felt the same way about me! Three weeks after I had surgery to remove her, Ol’ One-Eyed Mabel came back. She’s really kicking up a ruckus!
I didn’t intend this saga to become a trilogy, and I don’t really have a nickname for my navel. In fact, it ranked pretty low on my list of orifices for the majority of my life, at least in terms of importance. That’s why I didn’t prioritize addressing the umbilical hernia I got last summer when I stupidly tried to force a colossal terrarium up a flight of stairs so a tortoise could experience some semblance of a healthy life.
The prequels to this story are available here and here. The CliffsNotes version is that my torn labrum and cracked ribs I received from the episode healed, but the hernia didn’t: it got bigger and started to hurt. After a year, I finally got it looked at. I met with my doctor in short order, then a surgeon.
Four days later, I was under the knife. As far as I understand, my innards pushed through my outtards to such a degree the only way to fix it involved stapling the whole thing across my belly button. It was an “umbilectomy with hernia repair,” as my surgeon put it.
The operation took place a couple weeks ago on a Friday. It went fine, and I was given clear directions to call if the bleeding persisted after a week. I was advised that I’d be clear to return to work Monday, but that was optimistic: grateful for a supportive boss, I spent the next three and a half days in substantial pain under the care of Dr. Mom at my parents’ house. Sleeping on the recliner in the guest bedroom seemed to slow the bleeding, so I returned to work Tuesday and Wednesday.
In hindsight, that might have been unwise. I’ve done everything I’ve been told, but the healing process has been slow and frustrating: in just under a month, I’ve logged one surgery, one trip to the emergency room, two doctor visits, three surgeon visits, and ten days away from work.
My parents spent last week in Florida, so I stayed at their house and hoped the recliner would help my incision heal. That’s when I noticed that my belly button had reopened above the incision two days before my staples were to be removed. It was gross!
I continued to shower like normal, cleaning and redressing the wound twice daily. I sanitized my hands, cleaned the site with unscented baby wipes, sprayed it with hydrogen peroxide, patted it dry, and covered it in sterile 5×9 surgical dressings that I taped across my stomach. The rig was my mom’s design, but my doctor and surgeon both complimented me when they saw it.
Despite my efforts, the bleeding persisted after the staples were removed. Now it’s infected.
I’ve struggled getting in touch with my surgeon over the past month since he’s often on call and his office doesn’t provide a forwarding service or even a voicemail. Monday, my family doctor got ahold of him and prescribed me a pretty rigorous course of antibiotics that I was told to start immediately.
Aside from an hour and a half I spent at work Monday morning, I’ve been home the rest of the week. The office I work from is just big enough for four workstations, and it sits in the middle of a hot, powdery, factory floor. All things considered, there are a variety of reasons why returning to work before the infection clears up would not be smart.
That sucks because I’m a person who has to stay busy and it feels like my life’s been on hold for the past month. I’m frustrated, discouraged, and exhausted. I don’t know whether to be proud of my belly button’s perseverance or to resent its resiliency- or mine, for that matter.
An operation to fix a hernia is pretty minor as far as “major” surgeries go, but I didn’t expect there to be so many complications in its aftermath. Thankfully, I meet with my surgeon again later this morning. I hope to get some good information that helps this thing clear up and heal so I can get back to my life. I’ve lost twenty pounds in the interim, but I’ve been postponing standing invitations to four new flowing wells!
If adults were still required to turn in an essay on “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”, you would have more to write about than most of us. But that does not take away from the sucky way to experience the lazy days of August. I hope you get things back to normal soon.