That’s Not a Knife, This is a Fecking Knife

{ August 21, 2009 @ 10:09 am } · { Cutting & Recovery }
{ Tags: doctors, hospital, pain }

So the day, it hath arrived.  God knows how because I was NOT my usual super-organised self.  I really didn’t get my shit together but somehow I got here.  I’ve had pretty much zero sleep but my hair is pretty.  And that’s what’s important on a day like today.

I got to the hospital at 10am as requested. After being shuffled from room to room and nurse to nurse for various uninteresting questions (much the same ones I might add – ie whats your name and what are you allergic too… MSG and lactose intolerant, for christs sake), I disappear on a trolley and husband goes to find himself a spot of lunch (what a prick.  talk about rubbing it in).  Finally at 1pm they wheel me into the theatre.

After flirting oddly with the anaesthetists assistant (I don’t know why, boredom mostly) I apparently became unconscious and some bastard stuck a band around my stomach.  Ha!  I jest of course.

I’m woken up at quarter to 3 in recovery by some annoying bint who wouldn’t let me sleep another minute even though I really wanted to get some more kip.  I feel like there’s a vice around my sternum.  A massive burp would be brillo just about now thanks.  I mean a big old, Barney Gumble rip-snorter.  Ward clerk asks the nurse where to take me, I respond Rio and give him a thumbs up.  Clearly, anaesthetic has left sense of humour well intact.  Thank god.  Where would I be without gold like that?   (Yeah, I’m not just writing that for the sake of an amusing story.  That’s actually what I did.  I really am that kind of tool).

I arrive in room to find husband missing.  Hell hath no fury like a post-anaesthetic woman in a hospital with an absentee husband.  Half an hour later he rushes into the room apologetic and flustered because he’s been waiting outside for an hour and reception can’t work out what room I’m in. Pricks.

Contrary to popular reports and well-meaning advice from anaesthetists and surgeons, I have none of the promised powerful nausea or agonising pain. I am in fact, nausea and pain free.  What a gip!  I do however have an aching shoulder (I’m told they pump a blimp-ful of gas into the abdomen during surgery and something about nerve endings) and a small elephant seems to have taken up residence on my chest.  Lazy bastard!

Brain function is essentially zero.  I watch Confessions of a Shopaholic and He’s Just Not that Into You while husband snoozes on chair beside me.  That’s about the sum total of action in my cerebral cortex right now.  Can’t even manage reading.  Or talking.

Dinner arrives at some point and husband attempts to feed me lukewarm dishwater but it doesn’t appeal.  A quarter of one of those mini-hospital apple juices will do me fine and dandy thanks!

Visiting hours end at 8pm though husband is rampantly starving and can’t wait to get outta there and get food.  God knows why, I’m such sparkling company right now.

Night is spent being woken at odd hours for blood pressure, temperature and blood oxygen checks (good, ok-ish, fair-to-middling) and wandering backwards and forwards to bathroom.  Seemingly never-ending IV drip filled with sugar, salt and water has left my bladder somewhat overworked.  I do wonder why on earth they’re filling the fat chick with sugar and salt but hey, who am I to question?  I have a band.

And it rocks.

See funny on multiple levels cos the band is called “The Band” and the song is called “The Weight”.  Geddit?