Hello all!!!
I went in for surgery today and I got all patched up, and skipped out of the doctor’s office with my daughter riding on my shoulders…….and then I woke up. :( Last night I could hardly sleep. All I could keep thinking about was the last thing I heard about general anesthesia and the fact that some people don’t wake up from it. I stayed up thinking about that all night, wondering about how my family would fare without me. That stuff can really eat at you if you let it. But in the morning I stumbled across some other information about mortality rates. After reviewing the numbers concerning my chances of getting hit by a small meteor, getting stung to death by killer bees and being caught in the crossfire and killed by two Pigmy tribe warriors in a dispute over a Snickers bar, I decided I have been beating the odds for a while…call it luck! So with that being said, I felt better about going under the needle.
Well first off, I started my day by waking up a washing up with my non-scented soap and capping it off with no deodorant and of course none of the other smell good options. I guess just a dip in the water is how the surgeons prefer it. I know there are some precautionary reasons why this is done but I figured I would complain about it anyway. I don’t want to get to explicit here, but my wife decided that we should fool around a little before I am in a more fragile state for the next couple of months. On that note, what are everyone else’s experiences with “fooling around” while in your fragile states?
We leave the house on schedule and low and behold there is a fog so thick outside that you could barely see 20 feet in front of you. So after getting to the hospital 20 minutes later than scheduled, we valet park and get checked in. Through the whole check out procedure I am watching every piece of paper and watching every process, namely because I have seen way too many hospital horror story shows. Well it get’s interesting when I am finally loaded up on the bed and they get my IV running. I got very nervous as I looked down at the tube from the IV and I saw a small air bubble in the tube. The first thing I thought of was when I saw a three way love triangle movie where the guy killed his wife by injecting air in her veins with a needle (Do not let your kids watch TV, they will grow up to be as paranoid as me! lol).
The young lady then explained to me the difference between arterial injections and how that small bubble would be absorbed by the lungs and so forth. Following an explanation worthy of being published in the Harvard Medical Review, I relaxed and waited for the doc to arrive. The doc finally came in his business suit, as most expensive doctors do, and he cut my cast off. After all the other stuff I have been warned about, they could have warned me about the hand held commercial grade diamond bladed circular saw that was going to be used to sever the cocoon from my wounded appendage. I may be exaggerating slightly about this tools appearance, especially since I was told that it could not cut skin (which I have also been told about butter knife, but with the right amount of effort….you get my drift). The doctor finally got my cast off and wrote his name on the leg he planned to operate on. I suppose this is done to prevent him from taking a more in-depth look at my healthy Achilles.
Now this is when it gets weird yet again. After the doctor made his cameo appearance, the Anesthesiologist lady came in and placed a container on my stomach that was supposed to “relax me” and get me prepared for my GA. After glancing at the fluid filled container for a moment, as if it were the most expensive cocktail I have ever purchased, (which it is) I decided to lay my head back and take a deep breath and get ready for this procedure. After I came to from “nodding” off I noticed that the Anesthesiologist looked a lot different from how I remembered her looking. After getting over this woman’s abrupt aesthetic transformation I asked her exactly how much longer it will be until I go in to see the doctor. To that query she replied, “It has already been done”. WHAT THE HECK….HOW……WHEN???????
It was not until this moment that I became convinced that my brain only saves information in 5 to 10 minute increments because I have no recollection of the new liquid being added. Then as I processed this information I became aware of the fact that there was a slight throbbing going on under my new “leg cocoon”. It was not really a sharp pain, but it was just enough to let me know that something had occurred. That last thought was about the last clear thought I had for a good amount of time, because soon thereafter, my body and brain caught up to the fact that I should be “hung over” from my expensive little cocktail. I could not focus on any one object for longer than a few seconds, the oddly patterned “privacy curtains” ( that allowed me to see the exposed breast of a recovering drug addict going in for surgery in the bay next to me before I was sedated) made me feel like I was on an amusement park ride. I tried to focus on the nurses that were close to me and speaking to me, but occasionally I had to look off in the distance because I felt like the longer I looked at them, the bigger their heads got and the more I thought to myself, “Wow, I am really F@#$ed up”.
After about an hour of trying to come to and trying to prevent from regurgitating food that I knew was not there, I was finally convinced by my wife to get up and get ready to go. At some point she mentioned me looking sad and for some reason I thought of my daughter, and that caused a problem. A little background….. When I went to the ER Sunday when I first discovered my injury, my wife and my daughter were along for the ride. I was doing fine and sitting back trying to accept the fact that I will now probably never make it to be an all-star running back in the NFL (age and experience notwithstanding. lol) And I must have had a really blank look on my face and the following exchange took place between my wife and my 4 year old daughter…
Daughter: Is Daddy feeling okay?
Wife: He’s okay baby, he just hurt his leg.
Daughter: I know he hurt his leg but is he FEELING okay?
Wife: I don’t know, why don’t you ask him?
I was really giving though to what I had heard when my daughter turned to me with a very concerned look on her face and asked me in an unusually quiet and reserved voice…….”Daddy, are you feeling okay?” Wow, I had to fight a tear back a little bit and change my attitude and get more up beat and tell her that I was doing great and the doc is going to put me back together. It breaks my heart to see my little girl worry about me like that. So when I thought of my daughter as I was getting gear up to move out, I had to fight my tears and try to focus on getting up. Suddenly, something was not right. My chest felt tight, I felt warm, and I could not breathe and speak as well as I was able to a minute ago. I notified the nurses and they had me drink more water, juice and Sprite, but, to no avail. Then they had me sit up after I had laid back in the recliner they had bought in for me, and that made it worse. after a while they had me explain what I was feeling in more detail and they checked my vitals and said besides being a bit out-of-it, I should be fine. But I did not feel fine, I felt like I was dying from the inside. They told me to rest for a couple minutes and try again.
During that point in time, my wife started speaking again and she said my daughter’s name, and I asked her why she had to go and bring up her name. She told me, “Because she loves you just as much as I love you, and she wants you home”. After that, the dam’s that were blocking the tears where about as effective as a New Orleans levy against a catagory 5 hurricane. I had to let them out and keep dabbing my eyes as I summed up the strength to tell her how I was feeling about my little girl and the conversation they had the day before, and how I don’t want to make her sad and worry about me.
An odd thing happened after I let those few tears go… I felt better. The chest pressure was gone, I did not feel warm and I did not feel like someone had hit me in the sternum with a medicine ball anymore. I guess it is true, stress and emotions can wear down on you just like an actual physical ailment. After that sequence of events I am also of the mind frame that one of those nurses slipped some estrogen into my IV as some kind of a joke of some sort………moving on. J
So, it’s finally time to bid my hospital friends adieu, and I make a stop at the rest room. At this point I have had a full IV and a couple drinks of water, juice, and Sprite, and the bladder is not full, but it could stand to be emptied. Oddly enough, I stood in front of the toilet…on one leg and a crutch, for about 5 minutes, and nothing! I would get to the point to where the golden ropes should start to flow and then POOF, nada. So I thought that perhaps I did not have to go as badly as I thought I needed to. Well, after I get home and hydrate myself some more over the course of 3 hours, I am to the point that I need to go…NOW. After hiking Mount Everest, a.k.a the stairs leading to my bathroom, the same thing happens..AGAIN. So I hit the web and research my position, (just had surgery, GA, can’t Pee). Bam, and there it was, my full bladder functions are not quite awake yet. Soooo, what am I supposed to do? Well I make some calls to the hospital and I am given a few options all leading to one end result…I need to go in and get a catheter put in. So I asked the nurse on the phone, “Wouldn’t that be counterproductive?” And told me she did not understand what I meant. So I told her, “Won’t you just have to put me under GA again just to put the catheter in?” Of course I was being myself and joking around, but I could hear that she took the phone from her ear to let of a quick giggle and regain her bearings. She then informed me of the painful truth.
Great, so now I’m pissed (no pun intended)! I have to go get this painful crap done and noooobody told me that this was a side effect or a possible situation with a GA? Hmmm, well before I make this trip (that my wife is already trying to make me hurry and get dressed for before my bladder erupts and poisons me with waste ) I figured I was going to do some anatomy research on the internet a give myself 5 minutes to figure it out. Well long story short (as if this can get any longer) I went back to my little toilette, and I stared it down, and I held my breath and pushed with all the might I had in my body as if I were try ing to have a child or pass a gallstone, and low and behold, I got a few little trickles out. YES, YES, YES. No catheter for me! I was in the bathroom for a good amount of time pushing out what I could and I worked up a sweat doing it. If you are looking for an excellent toning exercise for your mid section, search no further! But since that point my bladder has awakened itself, due to the number of times I have to go since my wife has been throwing more water to me than the cops threw the protesters in the African American Civil Rights movement.
All in all, things are good, and I have yet to take a pain pill and I am 12 hours post op. Good night folks