Week One: Surgery!

Headed to bed on Wednesday night with my last meal and sip of water before midnight.  Surgery was scheduled for 1:30pm (with a 12:15pm arrival) the next day.  Was afraid I'd be parched by the time it came around!

I woke up at 9 the next morning to quite a few missed calls.  Turns out my time had been changed, but nobody had actually let me know.  In fact, I was supposed to be "under the knife" at 9:15!  They asked "when's the soonest you can get here?"  Luckily I live just down the street, so I took a shower (had a feeling I wouldn't be motivated to do so for another 2 days) and headed off to surgery.

The best part of this mix up was I had no time to stress, or anticipate the surgery.  The nurses took me to get changed, and then I had a brief meeting with my doctor and the anesthesiologist.  As we wheeled down the hall into the OR, I started feeling really strange.  A little woozy, hot but not too hot, a little cold...just strange. I mentioned it and the nurse joked, "that's because you're getting a cocktail!"  

I think they do this to calm you down before you go completely out.  I mean, it's pretty stressful right before you go into the room.  An IV is put in your hand, and the anesthesiologist then needs to explain to you how that since you are out cold, on muscle relaxers, lying on your stomach, someone else needs to do the breathing for you during surgery.  Luckily you're out cold for the whole tube-down-throat process, and the only after effect is a scratchy throat for about a day after.  For me, I was told they were about to put me under, and then the next thing I knew I was waking up looking out a window.

I entered the hospital at about 10:15, and went into the surgery I think around 11:30.  My brother and I were walking (crutching) out around 2 or 2:30.  Pain was non-existent since the doctor had done a nerveblock - essentially cutting off all feeling to my lower leg.  This has some risks, but the benefit is it staves off the true pain from surgery for anywhere from 12-24 hours.  For me, it lasted a full 24 hours, which was glorious!  

My brother and I took one last "jailbreak" from the couch for lunch before the pain hit the day after surgery.  That afternoon, the nerveblock wore off and the pain was, for a brief period, pretty unbearable.  I slept through a bit of it, but looked awfully pale and was extremely shakey.  I upped the vicodin to 2 every 5 hours during this period.  At night, I had serious trouble sleeping.  We actually stayed up late (like 1 or 2am) playing video games.  You may be thinking, "you should have been in bed!"  but when in pain, feeling wide awake, there is nothing worse than tossing and turning - especially when every turn is discomfort.  So, I went to bed when I was completely exhausted, and managed to fall asleep for a little bit.