Story Time: Day of Surgery

 Here it is, more details of my surgery experience. This part of my story pertains to the actual day of surgery, at least, as much of it as I can remember.

Woke up in the motel room about every 2 hours.  Checked the clock and I would go back to sleep.  Finally, the clock said 5:00 am.  I figured that's enough time to shower, dress and get to the hospital by 6:15.  My dad was up already, he's one of those weird people who can't manage to sleep past 4am.  Or, at least, that's what it feels like.

We get to the hospital, follow the directions I clutched in my sweaty little fist to find the Day Surgery section of the hospital.  I know, I know, this isn't day surgery, but this is evidently where everyone goes to get an IV and the fabu hospital gown.

I go to the lady at the desk, say my name, tell her I'm here for surgery.  She grabs my mother's chart.  I repeat my first name.  She gets my chart, and hands both of our charts off to some other nurses who sit at a desk just around the corner. 

At this point, I take off my nose-ring and give it to my dad for safe keeping.  Then I just wait.  Being short has a unique and wonderful advantage.  When waiting in most chairs, if I scoot my butt back all the way to the very back of the chair, my feet don't touch the floor and I feel like a little girl, my legs swinging.  I love that feeling.  It's soothing.

A nurse called me in, brought me to a bed that had some funky socks and wrappings and a gown laying on it.  My backpack was placed in the chair next to me. I'm instructed to get into the gown and put these weird white socks on. They've got a hole that's sposed to go on the top of your foot.

I undress, placing my shoes and clothes in a little plastic bag that had "Campbell, T" written on it. I've never liked it when my first name isn't spelled out.  I mean, what if there's a Theresa or a Tanya out there, and I end up with her clothes? Anyway...

I'm sitting on the bed, wearing funky socks and a gown that's open in the back. Whee! At this point the nurse brings my mom over to the bed next to me and I can hear the same instructions repeated.  Then that same nurse comes to me and has me lay back so she can put these funky orange and white leg braces on over my new funky socks.  It's quite an ensemble. 

Feeling nervous at this point, I feel the need to explain to every single person I come into contact with that I'm not wearing sunglasses because I'm cool, but because my normal glasses are in the shop and these are prescription.  I do this the minute a new nurse comes into my little curtained cubicle to inform me that she's going to insert the IV. 

She's middle-aged, blonde, and she looks tired.  She asks which hand I write with, I tell her, "My right," and gesture, just in case she might not know which is which.  She comes over to my left side and begins searching for a vein.

Normally, nurses love me and my poppy veins.  They tell me I should be a test subject for new nurses my veins are so good.  Evidently, to have good veins, you need to be hydrated.  apparently, not being allowed to drink water until 5:30pm the previous day, and stopping all intake of fluid at midnight made my veins go into hiding.  But, blonde-nurse decided to try on my left hand. 

She tells me she thinks she can feel a vein, and pokes.  I can't watch.  I feel some pain, but nothing outrageous.  Then I hear blonde-nurse curse under her breath.  I ask, "What's wrong?" She tells me she burst the vein.  I'm thinking to myself, "That's not a good thing."  She bandages up my left hand and comes to my right side, finally deciding to insert the IV under my thumb on the side of my wrist.  She pokes again, things seem to be going well, I ask, "Did you get it."  She tells me she did, but that I'm now bleeding all over.  I just close my eyes and lay back.

She finally gets the IV attached and fluid coming into me, but now the clean-up op has begun.  Three nurses are around me, changing my gown, bringing in towels and changing my blankets.  Everything looks very bloody. It doesn't make me feel any less nervous.

Meanwhile, over in happy land, my mom's IV seems to go in magically, and all is well. My nurse glances over as mom's getting her IV and says, "Sure, you get the one with the skinny hands."  At this point, I just want to kick blonde-nurse.  She's an ass.  And, I've determined, completely incompetent.

Fluids are rushing into me at this point, and a little known fact about 2000ml of fluid being pushed into your body... It makes you freezing cold!  For the first time, but definitely not the last, I am loving the fresh hot blankets.  Yay for warmed blankets!

Mom and Dad sit next to me, he's holding her hand (awww... sweet) and they're chatting.  Eventually, the guy who wheels beds around comes for me and takes me into a room labeled, post-anesthesia recovery.  I'm thinking the hospital must not like pre-op as a word.

I wait there, some fabulous south-african woman wearing pearls with her scrubs labels my backpack for me, and my sunglasses case.  I kinda watch some weird game show on a tv across the room, but since I can't hear it, it makes no sense to me. 

My anesthesiologist comes in and asks if I have any questions, but all my mind can do is repeat, "my god he's cute.  I'm very glad he's cute.  yay!"  Another nurse comes in and tells me she's going to be the nurse in the operating room.  I think, "cool, have you seen how cute my anesthesiologist is?" 

After about 45 minutes in that room, the bed-wheeler dude comes back to take me away.  My mother had evidently just been wheeled to the other end of this room, I ask if I can say a brief "hi-bye" and do so. 

And that, folks, is all I remember before surgery.  I have no recollection if the OR was left or right after we left that room, I don't remember anything at all about the OR. Nada, zip, zilch.

So, here I fade to black....

 

Waking up from the black was kinda traumatic.  Everything was so busy, so many people were around me, the lights were so bright.  And my god, my brain was fuzzier than it has ever been in my life.

Going with the theme of "Fuzzy Brain" everything for the next few hours feels like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie. Here is what I can recall.

• Fabulous soothing darkness of my hospital room.
• My dad's bright orange shirt walking into my room like a ray of sunshine.
• Babbling at my dad, then falling asleep mid-sentence.
• Some evil nurse holding my breathing tester up to my mouth and forcing me to inhale.
• Same evil nurse making me hold the breath tester myself.
• Tremendous dissappointment that I had a pain-ball instead of a morphine pump.

Finally, around 6pm I started feeling less fuzzy.  And that my mouth was hideously dry.  Everytime my nurse came in she would force me to test my breathing capacity and I would wait until she was gone and then just put the damn thing down.  She caught me once, came in two seconds after she had left and tsk-tsked me. 

I kept asking Dad, who was just reading quietly in a corner of my room, if mom was out of surgery yet.  I think she was, but I don't remember exactly when.

At 7:00 pm, my nurse came in and asked if I was ready to go for my first walk.  I said "sure," as my back felt sticky, and I just plain hate laying on my back for any length of time.   At 8:00 a couple nurses came in and took my leg compressors off, then I discovered my bed was magical.  Seriously.

They were able to tip the whole thing up and up and up, so that all I had to do was hold onto the rails at the foot of my bed and step down a few inches.  Magic, I tell ya.

I did one lap of the nurses station, and stopped in briefly to wave at my mom, who was feeling very fuzzy-brained at the time.  I doubt she even remembers me visiting her at that point.  Got back to my room feeling completely drained, and ready to lay back down.

Sleep is not an easy thing to do in a hospital.  Every hour or two someone comes around and places a death vice on your arm to check blood pressure, they prick your finger, stick a thermometer under your tongue, and force you to breathe in that stupid little plastic machine.  Plus, unable to really bend my right wrist, I couldn't get my pillows arranged to maximize comfort. 

Unable to sleep, I paged a nurse at 11:00pm and asked if I could go for a walk again.  She said, "Alrighty."  At about 12:30am I finally got my second walk.  This time, Gilda was my nurse.  She got my leg cuffs off, made the bed do its magic to stand me up and just as we were about to leave, some other nurse came in saying she needed my blood.  Gah!  So, Gilda helped me plop down into the armchair next to my bed.  My blood was taken, and Gilda helped pull me out of the chair.

We went for a walk together, then Gilda took me to my bathroom. (I didn't have to go, thanks to an evil invention known as a catheter that no nurse realized hurt like hell when they pulled or bumped it.)  And in the bathroom, Gilda washed my back while I brushed my teeth.  It was the most heavenly feeling in all the world.  I washed my front and brushed my teeth again while she changed my sheets and got me fresh pillows. 

Clean, and feeling semi-mobile, I got back into a clean bed and got a little bit of sleep.

Thus ends my Day of Surgery.