Maybe have whoever's driving you home text your people for you and you can reply when you wake up? I was lucid when I left the hospital but too groggy to do much and definitely a little loopy still. I got home from the hospital and slept until dinner (about eight hours?) and after that no drug side effects. The doctor will tell you when you should take your painkillers and in what combination, check with them before if you want to have it in mind. I hated the way percocet made me feel (and realized later it had increased my heart rate to an unsafe level so...cool, no opiates for me going forward) so I only took it the first day and stuck with advil after, but everyone's pain level is different. You'll be more out of it if you need to take the oxy longer.

I also never really had any gastrointestinal side effects so I can't comment on that! I can say that both my incisions were on the same side so I just slept on the other side after the first time (the first time I was drugged to the eyeballs and just passed out on my back) with no problems.

I was (and still kind of am) freaked out by the anesthesia but it was kind of cool? Focus on the cool science of it. it helped that one of the nurses was geeking out over how flexible IVs work so I could focus on that instead, lol.