Thursday September 4, 2008

The day began with an 8 am pre-op appointment where I was stuck and prodded and asked the same questions over and over.  I was glad for all of the above: they meant surgery was that much closer.  In all, three of the PRs and nurses I saw said, “We’ve never seen anyone come in for pre-op on the same day as surgery.”  Lest they were wondering why, it’s because God answers prayer–and He knew how important it was for me to reconnect with my life during last week’s trip, which wouldn’t have been possible if the hospital’s original schedule had been followed!

The insertion of the wire, to tell the truth, was the part of the day that had me a little nervous.  After the smelling salt extravaganza of my last foray into this form of medical torture, I was determined NOT to pass out…but not convinced that I had it in me to withstand the assault of this:

…and this:

…which really is a glorified version of this:

Well, I prayed and breathed deeply and pinched my thigh (bruises to prove it) and got through it swimmingly, getting well acquainted with the lovely nurses as I tried to keep my mind on them and off the prized elements of my female anatomy!     By the time I left the lab, I had something that looked a bit like this sticking out of me:

If I was really quiet, I thought I could hear the major networks in my head–but that might have just been starvation-induced hallucinations.  I waited in my wheelchair in the hallway for my all-expenses-paid trip to the OR and spent the time contemplating gag-me artwork and the sign above the exit which simply read “Phi.”  It made me miss my students…

Having successfully been squooshed and impaled on a giant needle, I moved on to the OR.  The nurse who greeted me was a vivacious and friendly young woman from BERLIN!!  She and I bonded over fantasies of Schitzel and Spaetzle!

Another nurse came to put in my IV and told me all about how inept other nurses are at drawing blood.  She then tried four different places on my arm and hand, failing each time to find a good vein, and causing me to bleed onto the floor.  I’m not kidding.  When she removed the large-bore needle at one point to replace it by a smaller one (I apparently have fine veins), blood came spurting out and dripping down my hand onto the floor and blanket.  My mom raised her eyebrows and looked away–always a bad sign…  Ya think removing the tourniquet might have helped?  While the nurse was mopping up the floor, I told my mom she had to invest in a camera phone so I could keep visual records of such exploits! 

She finally found a vein on the side of my hand that worked just fine…and I stopped wiggling my feet at warp speed, which is my antidote to queeziness caused by excessive blood loss at the hands of a nurse who was a self-proclaimed expert in the field.

My anesthesiologist was a Brit whose bedside manner consisted of actually sitting on my bed and shooting the breeze. 

I think we might have lapsed into flirting, quite by mistake!  When I asked that he be careful with my vocal chords, for obvious reasons, he said [insert Gecko voice from the Geico commercials], “Do you know how it makes me feel when patients ask me these questions?”  To which I replied, tongue in dehydrated cheek, “Oh, right, I forgot–it’s really all about you.”&
nbsp; He smirked.  Gotta love them Brits!