time for more details about the surgery...

so, Monday, March 17, 2003...St. Vincent's told me to arrive at 10:30, for my surgery that was scheduled at 12:30 - that definitely set the tone: hurry up and wait. Got there at 10:30 and they were surprised to find that all the paperwork they may have needed from me was taken care of when i did the pre-op bloodwork/ekg 4 days prior. so we (that's myself and mom) sit and wait. and wait. and wait. shortly before noon, they called my name and took me back to a pre-op waiting room - they tell me to get totally nekkid and put on the be-yoo-tiful hospital gown, blue hairnet and footies. they ask me yet again to make sure i'm not wearing any jewelry or anything (she actually asked if i had a belly-button piercing!) and i said no - i was only wearing what they gave me to put on. they start an IV on me, the nurse having difficulty finding a good vein - guess they've taken to hiding, what with all the blood donations and tests i've had done over the years! eventually she gets me stuck in my left arm. they checked all the other vital stuff too - my pulse, blood pressure, listened to my lungs, checked my temp, pulse-ox, etc etc...

so they brought mom back into the room and she waited with me until they took me to yet another waiting area, this one with curtains to separate patients rather than actual rooms. i'd see doctors look at me and walk by - how did they know who i was?!? well, apparently there was a dry erase board above my head behind me that had my name on it! i'm curious as to what else it said, because at one point the surgery department chaplain walked by, and stopped by the bed next to mine to talk to the woman having knee surgery. she said hello to me as she walked by, and said "We'll take real good care of you. I promise." was there something on the board above me that let her know i wasn't a religious person? not sure.

after some more waiting, i finally met Dr. Nouri - he told me he was going to be my anesthesiologist and would be putting stuff in my IV to send me off to sleep. then it was off to the operating room!

certainly wasn't anything like you'd see on er - the biggest thing i noticed was all the lights - big round lamps above me. certainly a good thing - i want the docs seeing what they're doing!! that's much more important than mood lighting like they show ya on tv. the other thing i noticed was the drastic temp change in the OR - it was very cool, maybe 60-65 degrees. there were several people scurrying about, getting things ready. as i was sliding onto the operating table from the gurney i'd been on, i saw Dr. Young, said "hi doc!" and that was the last i remember of him. dr. nouri had me slide into position onto the table, put a mask on me and told me to keep taking deep breaths...deeep breaths....deeeeep breaths. told me i was doing very good.

that's all i remember till after the surgery.

the next thing i remember is waking up in the room i'd been in before - everything was blurry. blurry blurry blurry. kept trying to focus my eyes, but it was all just blurry. the nurse was telling me i'd done a great job in surgery and everything was all right. they had put a breathing tube in during surgery, and it was already out when i woke up - my throat was SORE! the nurse fed me ice chips and asked me to rate my pain on the wong baker happy/sad face scale they'd shown me before - told her my pain was between 7 and 8, on a scale of 1 to 10. they gave me some morphine and something else through my iv - an anti-inflammatory whose name i've forgotten, it was something i don't recall having had before. eventually we graduated from ice chips to drinking some diet sprite - i was ambivalent about it at first, the thought of drinking something fizzy put me off, but apple juice and the other options given me didn't sound good either...the diet sprite was great, very refreshing. amazing how the simplest little things can mean so much - freakin ice chips felt like a gourmet meal!

alrighty, time for a break...i'll continue later....