Surgery

The stars finally aligned so that I could have surgery on my knee which had been a problem since tearing my ACL in January of 2010.  This is the 3rd surgery and “third times a charm” or so they say and I pray!

Aligning the stars when your daughter needs constant supervision and physical support is quite a task.  Luckily Bill, dear sweet Bill, was more than willing to take up the slack and we have a  caregiver who loves to make money.  What a combination.

If you’ve had surgery before you know you’ll get a call the day before to tell you your surgery time.  So, all day long I’m carrying my phone around waiting waiting for a phone call.  No call, no voicemail, nothing.  Around 6 I call the number on my pre surgery instructions and no answer.  So, I left a message, “hello” “I’m still having surgery but can you let me know what time???????”  This all leaves me rather anxious that night.  Later I discovered this was the setting on my phone, (don’t know how that happened).

On surgery day I set my alarm clock for 5:30 am so I can get up and call the surgery nurse.  Around 5:15 I get a call and the nurse said that my surgery would be at 9:25. Also, she said she called yesterday and there was no answer.  Suspicious but see what I figured out above.

From the moment I woke up at 5:15 that day I had a head ache and all I can think is coffee will make it go away.   But, the warning is quite stern, no liquids after midnight.  Wagging their fingers they say, don’t even think of taking a sip as some anesthesiologist are so picky that they will postpone your surgery.

Arriving at the surgery center at 7:30 it wasn’t long and I was in the hospital gown and into the bed.   All I could think about was coffee, coffee, coffee.  I still had the worst headache of all time.  When the nurse finally got done finding a vein for my iv I told her, this would have all gone better if I had been hydrated and had some coffee.  She didn’t care and then I asked her if I could have some coffee and she just left.

Then in came the very nice anesthesiologist to do a run down on my body from head to toe.  I actually felt quite healthy from his questions.  At the end I told him I had a headache as I needed coffee and he said he ordered Tylenol and I can have that anytime.  My mind is thinking, wow, a sip of water, perhaps that would help.  So, Bill flagged down the nurse and I got my sip of water and my Tylenol.  No sooner had I gotten the Tylenol I was wheeled off to surgery.

The featured image is of me the second I woke up, coffee in my hand!  Bill had gotten one for me and I got another cup from the nurse.  I felt so happy.  The surgery went well, of course.  Bill says, that a surgeon never says, the surgery went terrible!  Now I’m on the hard road of rehab.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far from my 11 days of rehab:

Showers are over rated.  Waterproofing the stitches is not worth the effort and you save a lot of time by not showering every day.

British TV shows are the best. I’m enchanted by British television shows.  I binged watched Broadchurch and now I want to colour my world with all things British.

I fancy a cup of tea now!  If you’d like one too pop on over.