Surgery!

I was a complete ball of stress the night before the surgery and slept for MAYBE two hours. I would have been stressed anyway, but the fact that one of my daughter's classmate's moms died a few days earlier due to complications during routine surgery certainly didn't help my nerves. Of all the things I had been worried about prior to surgery, dying wasn't actually one of them. Logically, I know this sort of thing is extremely rare, but if you're the statistical outlier, it really doesn't matter how rare something is. My husband was apparently also a ball of stress and slept maybe two or three hours, two of which were in the morning when I was leaving. I actually felt more sorry for my husband than myself, as I figured my day was pretty much shot anyway, ha ha, so what did I need the sleep for?

My surgery was scheduled for 7:30 AM, and I needed to be at the surgical center by 6:30. My mom picked me up at 6:15; the plan was that she would take me to the surgery center and stay there until my husband got there after getting the kids up and dropping them off at daycare/summer camp. I told my mom she didn't need to stay - I mean, what did it matter to me, I was knocked out - but she insisted. As it turns out, my husband went back home and went to bed after dropping the kids off, and I was actually awake and ready to leave before he got there.

The surgery center was a pretty typical medical-type place. After checking in, I went to the preparatory area and was soooo nervous. My mom came with me, and I was happy to have her there, although my mom is extremely wary of all medical professionals (PTSD from years of draconian military hospitals, I think). I don't think she has been to a doctor since I became aware of such a thing as doctors, plus she's generally very outspoken and opinionated about everything, so I was sort of worried about what embarrassing thing she might come up with to say. Fortunately, the pre-op nurses were awesome and helped me relax a bit. One of them was asking me about my family history, which is always awkward, because I was adopted, so I don't have a family history that is relevant to medicine. However, it turns out the nurse was also adopted, so she and my mom swapped adoption stories while I sat there and shivered. Apparently it wasn't actually cold, I was just nervous.

The time leading up to surgery is pretty fuzzy; I remember talking to the anesthesiologist, who explained that in addition to knocking me out, he would be giving me a local anesthetic in my leg to help with the pain post-surgery. Then my doctor came in, and asked me how I was doing. I told him I was doing well, and that my hip had actually been feeling pretty good. LOL. He asked if I was sure I wanted to do this. I wonder what he would have said if I had said no! He then went on to reassure me that it was normal with this condition to have good days and bad days, but with the surgery the hope would be to put the bad days behind me. Then I vaguely remember him talking to my mom about her shoes (Chaco's) and mentioning that he also had a pair of them, and that they were better than Teva's because the velcro on Teva's wears out after a while, especially when you wear them in the water. So he got a pair of Chaco's about 15 years ago when he was in Boy Scouts, and still has them. Fortunately my mom did not share her opinions about Boy Scouts with the doctor, but she did use the opportunity to complain about how Chaco's used to be made locally but were now made in China.

The other thing I remember, which is actually pretty funny when I think about it, is that multiple people kept asking me to tell them what type of surgery I was having. You know how you hear horror stories about people going in for knee surgery and coming out with a double mastectomy, or the left limb getting operated on when it was the right limb with the problem, etc.? Well, I know they take this problem very seriously now, because even when I've just gone for X-rays or an MRI, I've needed an ID band, and about three different people have double checked what I'm having done. I figured the chances of a huge mistake occurring at a small surgical center were pretty slim, but nonetheless, right before surgery, the nurse asked me to confirm which hip was being operated on. I told her it was my right hip. She then pulled out a marker and wrote a big NO on my left hip and big YES on my right hip. As if that weren't enough, when the surgeon came in, he asked me to confirm that it was my right hip he was supposed to be working on, and when I did, he pulled out a marker and put his initials under the big YES on my hip. Seriously, that's sort of funny. Like it's a binding contract or something. My mom remarked that hopefully he could read; he chuckled and replied, 'Yes, yes, fortunately I can read.' (I know it's not the most important quality for a surgeon, but I'm always a sucker for people with a sense of humor.) I had heard stories about people marking their bodies up before surgery to point the way to the body part to be operated on, but I seriously thought those were just urban legend.

That's about the last thing I remember clearly; eventually, the anesthesiologist came in and told me that he was going to give me something to help me calm down and then that was it. When I woke up, I heard two nurses talking, and I'm still not sure if I dreamed this, but they were having this really bizarre conversation about how young I looked and how they could not believe that I was 39. I guess that's fitting considering I still can't believe my surgeon is old enough to actually be a surgeon, but in reality he can't be THAT much younger than I am. Anyway, maybe I was hallucinating all of it. However, shortly thereafter, I remember coming to full consciousness and being in agonizing pain. It wasn't my hip, but my back. I'm pretty sure that as I woke up, I tried to scream, only I couldn't because my throat was incredibly sore, and only after a bunch of fluids could I actually even talk at all. I must have had a freaky look on my face, though, because the nurses acted sort of panicky. (Then again, maybe it was because they realized I had heard them TALKING ABOUT ME and my baby face). At some point, the doctor came in and told me the surgery had gone well, and that he was able to fix me up relatively quickly. (Hopefully in this haste he didn't leave any of his tools inside of me; I've heard that happens, too.) There were no surprises, and he was able to fix the tear by... doing something with a pin or something. I was sort like, eh, whatever. He said he would call me the next day, and I was like, eh, whatever.

Due to my extreme back pain, I ended up leaving the recovery room sooner than I should have, in my humble opinion. But, I was sooo uncomfortable lying down the nurses decided I should go into the 'sit up' room. I was much more comfortable sitting up, but the nurse in the sit up room was sort of annoying and, quite frankly, sort of stupid, and I think I actually ended up going home a few hours earlier than I should have.

I was still in a semi-delirious state in the sit-up room, while listening to the nurse go on about how the Indians had natural medicine from plants (this reminds me of the Geico commercials: yes, everyone knows that, dear), and how the Indians had wiped out the white men with their diseases (even in a state of delirium, I was pretty sure it was the other way around - smallpox, anyone?). However, I just smiled and nodded my head and drank my water (or was it 7 Up? Ginger ale?). I let my mom set the record straight; it's her specialty. But... what was my mom still doing there? And where was my husband?? I was so confused! Eventually someone asked me if I thought my husband was coming soon, and I asked what time it was. It was only 10:00ish! Since we were counting on a three-hour surgery, my husband and I had figured that between the surgery and the recovery time, it would be around 12:30 before I'd be ready to leave. However, the surgery only took an hour. (I should get a discount for how little time it took.) I finally called him around 10:30 and was like, Come pick me up, please! I suppose my mom could have taken me home, but her car fits into the teeny sports car category, which would have been really hard for me to get into and would have required flexing my hip more than 90 degrees. Plus, I was really goofy at that point and had no feeling in my right leg, and that's just not the sort of thing my mom deals with well.

Eventually my husband arrived and took me home. I mentioned before there is no easy way into our house, and especially when you are half comatose and can't really move one of your legs. My husband decided it would be easiest to get me into the house through the front. I was seriously so drowsy I didn't think I could get out of the car, nor did I really want to. I wasn't in any pain, it was the residual effects of the general anesthesia. I'm sure I was being totally unhelpful, so my husband decided to go borrow my mother-in-law's wheelchair. (My mother-in-law is 80 and has severe arthritis and lives in a cottage in our back yard.) I know I must have been out of it because I would have normally objected to this, especially in such a public location as our front yard, only I didn't argue. After he wheeled me up the front walk, somehow I managed to use the crutches to get up the stairs of the front porch and into the family room, where I got onto the futon and went to sleep.