1. Avoid strenuous activity or lifting for the next few days. Many feel tired and run down after an operation. It is illegal to drive a car while taking narcotic medications.
2. You can expect to have some crampy abdominal discomfort, gradually decreasing in intensity over the next 48 hours or so. You may also experience shoulder pain from the air placed in your abdomen, especially when you get up and move around. Placing heat on the shoulder area may help the pain.
3. If you are having pain at an incision site, please use an ice water pack (Ziploc bag with ice water inside). If that is too cold, place a moistened washcloth down first. Use this as much as you wish.
4. Slowly resume a normal diet. Anesthesia, as well as pain medication, can frequently cause nausea. Advancing your diet slowly from soups to solids seems to help keep nausea from being a problem.
5. You have steri-strips over your incisions. You may shower and pat these dry. Do not submerge the incisions (i.e. bathtubs, swim pools, hot tubs); however, you may shower with them. The steri-strips can stay on until your appointment at the office in a week or so. Sometimes they fall off before then, that is okay, just cover the incision with a band-aid. The stitches are all under the skin and will dissolve on their own. A small amount of bleeding, bruising, or fullness around the incisions is also common.
6. Please call our office if you have any of the following:
a. Increasing pain not relieved by your medication.
b. Fever 100 degrees or more.
c. Nausea or vomiting with inability to keep liquids down.
d. Any problems that alarm you.
Please call our office at 541- 754-1286 if there are any questions.
