2 weeks since take down

Hey folks

Just wanted to let everyone know how I'm feeling since my take down surgery which I had on the 24th of January.

So my wound originally had 9 staples holding it mostly closed, and it was being packed daily by a home care nurse.
3 were in the middle, 3 were on the far right, and far left sides of the wound site.
The 6 outside ones were removed on the 1st.

At this point I was feeling pretty good. I started taking Benefiber every night. I also drink about 3 to 3 1/2 liters of water a day.
My bowel movements have been a little hard at first. My homecare nurse said Fruit, Fiber and Fluids is what I needed. I make sure I'm getting 90-100% of the recommended daily amount. This helped greatly. I'm going about 6-7 times a day. For the first few days it felt like I had to go constantly, I would sit on the toilet for 2-3 hours at a time. That is probably because I needed to increase those 3 F's (fruit, fiber, fluids).

Saturday the 4th was not a fun day. The expression on my homecare nurses face when she came to pack my wound was like
The 3 remaining staples were hanging on by barely any skin. One was fish hooked and I could see both ends of the staple through the wound. I guess I must have been playing a little rough with my 2 year old son Friday night. My home care nurse sent me to the ER to get them removed early. They were supposed to come out today (the 8th) but they came out 4 days early. This made my wound hurt a lot more. My body ached a lot. I was taking a lot more Tylenol 3 and ran out.

I went to see my family doctor Monday as the T3's weren't effective and I was out of pain killers. Apparently I have a terrible family doctor because he's not able to prescribe anything stronger than Tylenol 3?! They take the edge off of the pain but it hurts a lot. Today I went to have a followup with my surgeon. My wound apparently looks "beautiful" which is good. He put some silver nitrate on it, it burns... It's been a few hours and it's still burning. I'm assuming it should since he said it cauterizes the wound. Yuck. He also gave me a prescription for Tramacet, I hope it works... This pain has been terrible!

Finally I just want to say in no way is this pain making me regret anything. I feel so good otherwise. I have complete control over my bowel movements. I'm not going 20 times a day any more! I am excited to heal up and take advantage of the way I feel.

How long will you stay home from work?

There are so many different versions of post take-down on this forum! They are 90% or so realla successfuly, just with a few twists along the successful way. As I posted earlier, and I can't stop repeating proudly like a 5 year old, I have my take-down set for March 19th. I just counted the bags I have at home, subtracted that from the 40 days til take-down, and ordered the difference (20 bags) from my stoma nurse.