I'm scared, & need some immediate help guys!!

[birdgirl73]

Sister, Smoking Monkey is our resident dentist, which I hope is OK that I told you. She has the same medical background that physicians do and has the added bonus of knowing how anesthesia/analgesia work, too.

Please tell your anesthesiologist about your nicotine use before he/she puts you under on Friday. My husband, who may sign on after I finish here, is an interventional cardiologist. He does procedures three days a week in which people are put under some type of anesthesia. He just said "I'd feel a hell of a lot better about her smoking a bowl of weed after she gets home from her surgery than more cigarettes." He doesn't just say that because of the everyday risks we all know about tobacco. He means so your tissues can heal, the bleeding can stop and so you don't give yourself post-op complications like deep vein thromboses.

Do check in with us when you get home on Friday!

[FakeBoobsRule]

Every time I sit down to write a response I get interrupted. I almost was done last time but had to run so I copied it to finish it later, then it got erased. I will post an answer here soon.

[Sweet Little Sister]

Birdgirl, what's deep vein thromboses? I have vericose veins in my left leg & that just caught my eye.

FBR, even though I obviously got through my surgery okay, could you post what you were going to post anyway? I'd like to know as much as possible, in case I ever have to go through this again.

My anesthesiologist didn't seem concerned about me smoking weed OR cigarettes. As long as I didn't do it after midnight, I DID have 4 drags of a cig that morning, but told him. He had no problem with it. I asked him if I could smoke weed when I got home & we talked about weed vs. pills. We both agreed weed is better.... him saying he WISHED he could do that instead of drinking, haha. According to him, he doesn't, & I believe him. I felt better after talking to him. I didn't realize they have MD's.

Bottom line is, I'm okay, thank God, but I'd still like any info I can get, just in case. Even though he said I could have smoked up until that night, I'm not so sure that would have been a good idea, but like I said, I want to hear what everyone else says,

I also want to thank everyone for all of your support!! You helped me so much more than you'll probably ever know!!

[birdgirl73]

Glad to see you back online, Sister, and glad you made it through successfully. That's the good thing about anesthesiologists; they're very cool people, as a rule, and more accepting of recreational drug use than any other type of medical specialist I've ever met. Maybe it's because they're in the business of drugging folks to take away pain and administering various types of medicines that other physicians wouldn't even begin to consider.

Deep vein thromboses (the -es ending is simply the plural form of thrombosis) are essentially blood clots that originate in the deep veins of the lower half of the body, usually in the legs or the pelvis. When people have surgery, they're lying still and are anesthetized. The surgical procedure opens up an incision and the body begins to respond to that perceived injury by releasing clotting substances into the bloodstream, among other things. I also have a theory that a surgical incision interrupts the body's normally closed, contained vascular fluid system and that, just like would happen if you had a closed bottle of fluid lying on its side and cut into it, an incision in a human body throws off that fluid equilibrium, which causes air bubbles and, with coagulation chemicals like thrombin thrown into the mix, prompts clots to form and want to break loose and travel upstream.

Therein lies the problem. A clot that forms down deep in the leg veins is going to want to travel upstream to the lungs along with the other blood returning in that direction to be oxygenated and recirculated. So people who form DVTs are at risk of having a pulmonary embolism or even an embolic stroke. You don't want a pulmonary embolism or a stroke.

Lots of things put people at risk for DVTs. Surgery, and particularly female surgery (the longer the procedure, the higher the risk). Varicose veins. Recent air travel. Obesity. Cigarette smoking. Higher estrogen levels from birth control or simply being of the female sex. It's not a post-operative complication that's fun to deal with. And it's a very common one. I had a colleague about 10 years ago who went into the hospital to have some fairly minor back surgery--a perfectly healthy, slender, non-smoking 32-year-old who had gotten married to the love of her life about four weeks earlier--and when she was allowed to get out of bed the next day and stand up, she took 10 steps over to the sink and fell over dead from a DVT embolism that had traveled up to her brain. It's fairly standard operating procedure to put people in compression boots or anti-thrombus compression hosiery before surgery to help lower the risk, but it can't be completely eliminated. In the case of Diane, my colleague, she was on birth control that probably raised her estrogen levels to a more risky level, and it turns out she also had an until-then-unidentified clotting disorder. The disorder in combination with the birth control made her a walking DVT time bomb, only they didn't know that till too late.

You can read more here at these sites:
Deep vein thrombosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Deep venous thrombosis
Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT): Venous Disorders: Merck Manual Home Edition

[silkyblue]

Sister, Im happy your okay :thumbsup: I have a vari vein too on the side of me weg, crazy thangs vari veins!

That sounds like a reallycool doktor !

I quit cigs 7 year sago

hubby nagged at me till I just quit the dam things

I dont regret quitting cigs but

I trully didnt know where to put all my new found air

much good luck to ya sis