5 June 2018
 Categories: Health & Medical , Blog

If you are having a hysterectomy, appendectomy or other abdominal surgery, then you can make your post-surgical life a lot easier by preparing your home using each of these tips.

Tip: Stock Your Linen Closet with Pillows of Various Sizes

When you return home from your abdominal surgery, you will need a variety of different pillows to make you more comfortable while sitting or lying in bed. Since you won't know what pillows will work the best until the time comes, stock your linen closet ahead of time with a variety of different sizes and densities.

Tip: Stock Your Kitchen with Disposables

The last thing you will feel like doing in the weeks after your abdominal surgery is washing dirty dishes. This task is miserable when you are feeling well, and when you are sore or tired from surgery, the task quickly becomes overwhelming.

Rather than facing the choice of a sink piling full of dishes or cleaning when you aren't yet physically able, instead, stock your kitchen with each of these disposable items:

• paper plates
• paper bowls
• plastic or paper cups
• paper napkins
• plastic utensils

Don't worry; you can go back to being very earth conscious after you recover from your surgery and washing dishes is once again easy to do. For now, forget about it and use disposables to make your recovery easier.

Tip: Stock Your Kitchen with Easy-to-Prepare Food Choices

As with using disposable kitchen items, you may not typically eat a lot of frozen or other prepackaged foods in your regular day-to-day life. However, after surgery, you need to preserve your energy for healing and having quick, and easy-to-prepare meal options is a great way to do so. 

During the week prior to your abdominal surgery, stock your freezer with frozen meals, frozen vegetables, and some ice cream for those times you want something sweet or your stomach feels upset. 

Stock your pantry with individual-serving size packages of snacks, boxes of cereal, noodle soups, and other shelf-stable items you can quickly microwave or add boiled water to prepare.

Tip: Make Arrangements for Household Assistance

There are plenty of things you do around your home each week that will cause you injury while healing from abdominal surgery. For example, bending over each morning to pick up your newspaper or brushing the dirt out of your backyard swimming pool. Rather than waiting until you return home from surgery, make arrangements today for people to help you with:

• collecting your newspaper and mail
• lawn mowing
• landscape watering
• pool maintenance
• housecleaning
• pet care

Finally, if you will need to arrange transportation for follow-up appointments or to get to the grocery store, then make arrangements for these things before surgery. It will give you a nice peace of mind to know everything has been prepared for your return home. For more information on surgical procedures, contact your local surgery center.