The Day After

Here is the story of me at the hospital. It is quite a story so bare with me.

I had to be at the hospital at 8:30 A.M. so I was thinking we would be one of the early ones and there wouldn't be a whole lot of time for the Dr. to be running behind. The thing I did not account for was all the STUFF that needs to happen first before they actually put you on the table. The thing I am most happy about is that the surgery was early enough that Paul was able to come with me before he needed to go help set up for his brothers wedding. The staff were all very nice and made it not so intimidating to be there. I have only had surgery twice before and while I was still knocked out for those all they had to do was prop my mouth open and take what they wanted; teeth or tonsils. This was the first time I was going in to have something cut open and fixed so it was a bit nerve wracking for me.

Anyways, when all the paper work was done and they called us back to put on the little nighty, the nurse sat with us and made sure everything was done and tested all my vitals. Then there was an incident when I was trying to give them a sample to make sure I was NOT pregnant but I am choosing to leave that out (Sorry for the typo, I'm on a lot of medication). When I got back the CRNA (assistant to the anesthesiologist) had to ask me all about my history again to make sure the Anesthesiologist could put me under and not hurt me. The nurse and the CRNA asked Paul what exactly I did to be able to tare my tendon like I did. On his way out the CRNA said that he was going to have to try that rubber band thing cause it sounded like a lot of fun. Really, it is so much fun, until you get hurt and if you are anything like me, once I get hurt on something I do not go back. Everyone says that when you fall you should get back up and try-try again. When I fall, I choose to just walk away, it hurt going down and I do not want to relive it.

Well I finally got on the table and Paul got to go get breakfast. Dr. Edwards was introducing me to everyone, it was like a little reunion, they were all so friendly. While I was laying there on the table they put about 5 warm blankets on me, oh I loved it. Then I remember them cleaning my foot, chattering a little, then I was out. My worst fear was to wake up during the surgery, I have watched too many Dateline shows and others about the stories of people waking up on the table but not being able to let the Dr.'s know because they were so heavily sedated so they got to feel the whole thing. Unfortunately I woke up during the surgery. To keep myself from freaking out I just started talking and someone would answer every once in a while. My first question was "Why am I awake?" They told me something that calmed me down but I still kept mumbling into the oxygen mask to keep myself calm. At one point I heard my Dr. say something along the lines of "Wow, that's not supposed to be like that. We'll have to fix that too." Then I start mumbling like crazy trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Dr. Edwards told me they just found another little whole that they could not see on the MRI but that she would explain it to me when I woke up a little more after the surgery. At one point I remember raising my hand because I could not get any ones attention and no one had answered me back in awhile. They said that was when they gave me more drugs to try and calm me back down because I was talking too much.

As they were wrapping up my foot I was coming out of the anesthesia enough to tell them the boot they were trying to put on me was pushing on the wrong spot. Then I had to slide over to the gurney and it took me about three tries because I would only scoot over about 6 inches at a time. Since I was mostly awake by the time I was taken to the post-op, I was only there for about 20-30 minutes. Long enough to be able to sit up on my own and have the Nurse go over some post-op instructions. As you can tell from the picture, just because I say I was mostly awake and coherent does not mean my eyes would open up. Paul was pretty disappointed because I told him about some of the stuff I did when I was coming out of anesthesia for my first two surgeries but that did not happen this time.

I've decided that if I stay up with my pill schedule then I should be able to get through this with feeling little to no pain from the surgery. The hard part is now I am on crutches and can not balance very well knowing that if I start to fall over I better hope there is a chair behind me because I cannot use my left foot to balance me.

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me and e-mail or called. It means the world to me.