Surgery Recap part one

Okay, I didn’t actually sleep that whole time. The mailman brought me a package from Sporks, my twitter friend, which included a toy for the kitties, and I played with them after the nap (and they stole the toy! like, it was a catnip-filled bunny on an elastic string dangling from a stick. They snatched the stick out of my hand and moved it out of my reach, eventually taking it to the cat tree where one sat up top with the stick-end and the other was on the ground with the bunny. They had the toy for less than half an hour before bunny was separated from the rest, the little bastards.) I also had dinner and visited with The Boy, who also was the first to sign my cast. Because we are terminator nerds, it says “I’ll be back. -The Boy” (so I can put a pic of the cast up when I has more sigshad to show without fucking up his privacy.)

Anyway, recapping:
Tuesday night I had to stop eating and drinking at midnight, so Comma came over when she got out of work and at 11:30 I had some chinese food and some ben and jerry’s peanut butter cup ice cream and took my last dose of pain killers (finishing it all by 11:55). Comma and I stayed up way too late and talked and talked and I love her lots, and finally I let her leave so she could go to sleep (and so could I!) I slept pretty well that night, for which I am thankful.

In the morning I filled out the “Advance Directives” form, which is like a mini-will/living will thing that says if you want to be resuscitated and also what you want to do if you are in a persistent vegetative state and who is in charge of your decisions if you can’t make any (rather than stress out the Boy, I assigned my mom and my brother to do so) and also any other directions (which I used for estate stuff, despite not having much estate. I will have to write a real will sometime.) And I gathered up my junk (a book, my phone and charger, my daily meds, etc) and spongebathed and changed clothes. Spongebathing is actually really hard work when your leg is broken, you guys. I was really excited to get clean and put on deodorant, but by the time I was done (and I worked fast!) I was so tired I forgot all about the deodorant! Comma had snagged the clothes I wanted from my bedroom the night before, so it was easy to get changed. I wore a dress I got last time I was in Hawaii, because it’s super easy to get on and take off, which is handy for surgery. Helen Killah picked me up just before one, and we had a pleasant time chatting on our way down to the hospital.

When we got there, it was so funny–there were a few front desk employees out front, and since I was standing on the side walk on crutches, one wanted to make sure we were using the right door before I crutched in and maybe got told I had to go around to another door, and in the middle of telling us that she noticed that Killah was injured, too, and we became a bit of a spectacle. People found it hilarious that between us, we only had one working pair of legs. (Her left leg is broken, and my right is, so it really is one working pair!)

We got checked in, and set up in a cubicle in holding where I got to sit in a vinyl-covered recliner with my foot up (as seen in the pic below) and then Killah headed out because she had afternoon plans, and I did some reading and crossword puzzling, and then got changed and set up with my hospital bed.

I was scheduled to go into surgery at 4. I don’t think I went in until after 6. My doc had scheduled 4 surgeries, and surgery number 3 ran way long, so I didn’t even get to leave holding until after 6ish. While I was waiting a number of other doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, etc came by and asked about how I hurt myself. Many of them scolded me “you’re not supposed to do risky physical activities after 30!” and I laughed and nodded, but I was kind of pissed at them. How dare you say what I can and cannot do?! They were all really nice otherwise, though. The main nurse in holding, Susan, was really nice and sweet and we talked books for a bit, so she can be excused for suggesting this is the end of my derby career. (It’s SO NOT, y’all.) Doctor Joly (whose name, despite all my understanding of language, is pronounced “jolly”) came by and initialed my big toe so he wouldn’t operate on the wrong one (and because my toes were the only part of me exposed!) and I got wheeled into the OR, which was pretty close to holding. I chatted and joked with them for a bit and have no recollection of when I went out like a light.

I’ll put up part two tomorrow, because I am still wicked tired.

Killah and I with our broken legs.