Off to the OR!

The Tuesday night before my surgery was long and restless. I was honestly afraid. Since I was taking Eliquis as a blood thinner I had to stop it on Monday so it could flush out of my system. In order to reduce risk of more DVT or PE (clot in my lungs), J gave me a prescription for Lovenox which I would have to give myself via an injection in my belly. I didn’t have any qualms about the self-injection, but no one bothered to tell me that the shit burned! It was like 10 yellow jacket stings. Even the Lovenox takes 24 hours to clear so I would be a high risk for bleeding. Sigh. Having had general anesthesia a few weeks prior didn’t help my cause either. Nothing was going to be easy.

Several times during my time at home I’d be sleeping in the recliner and if it tipped back too far back I’d scare myself awake thinking I was falling. The night before my surgery my mind kept replaying the crash, and I kept thinking about everything I had encountered since my crash. This night was another night where working in healthcare scares the hell out of you as you ponder everything that could go wrong. Aspiration during intubation, anesthesia giving too much, too little, what if I get a surgical wound infection, oh geez I get to have a catheter again, hopefully I don’t get a uti.

The difference between this surgery and the first was that for the first I really didn’t have a choice and accepted my fate. I had quickly trusted the surgeon and hospital in TN, now my revision surgery I was full of doubts, what if’s and worries. Thanks for that Builder Bob.

I also have friends in the OR and the ortho floor who had put out words with their bosses that I was going to be a patient. Thank you Mary and Katrina - will discuss them later...  I do think Mary came to pre-op to check on me and give me a hug.

I arrived with the other flock of pre-op patients Wednesday morning. The valet person was great. Helped me into a wheelchair so we didn’t have to fool with a walker. We needed as little hassle as possible for once. The entire pre-op experience is just that an experience. You are stuffed in a waiting room with a slew of other people and given a pager. People watching is a great distraction when you’re nervous as crap. When your number goes off it’s off to pre-op. They do tend to try to do the same routine stuff each time so we stopped at a scale where I’d have to maneuver myself up and on to it for an accurate weight. Then through a maze of hallways to pre-op which funny enough is past post-op(PACU). The next stop for us would be to pee and brush teeth. Yes, ok... reduces bacteria in your mouth for your intubation. Then to the stretcher. Here’s a bag, here’s your beautiful bear hugger gown and here’s some socks. Take everything off, put in bag and get dressed in your gown. Well I had told Mom to stay in the waiting room. It’s a long walk from one place to the other and I knew they would run her back and forth. So here I am, no walker, nothing to hold on to and no one to help me try to get my clothes off and socks on. I think I failed to get the left sock on. Meanwhile there is noise all around because patients are everywhere. Eventually the nurse comes to start IV and asks the same dozens of questions I have answered over and over again. The first IV failed but the second one worked. They gave me my controller for my wondergown and I waited. Nerves were creeping in. I was people watching to distract myself and wondering who I would get for anesthesia. I saw a couple of the ones I had worked with in the past go by, but not mine. Finally I met the team. I’d have an anesthesiologist and a CRNA. I think the CRNA was named Mary. I remember her having a Virginia Tech scrub hat. Cool. Oh yea as part of your prep here you have to take this mouthwash stuff and swish it around for what seems like forever while trying not to barf from the taste of it. This is gross. In TN they had made me do something similar but I had to swallow it there. I wonder if that was just an antacid. I don’t know but I knew that stuff was gross at RMH.

Jesse arrived, I asked him if he had a good night sleep. He assured me he went to bed early. Soon he’d autograph my leg and leave me to go scrub. J is kind of a big dude. He’s not fat, he’s just stocky. I remember thinking his scrubs looked almost too small, but he’s just too cute with his sneaky smile and dark eyes. I can’t remember who came to get me to drag me to the OR.I think it was a male nurse, I remember turning into the OR and thinking damn we get a big room today. I look around and said hi to the scrub nurse who was at the foot of the room by the tables of instruments. There was another person in the room. I said hi to them too. They stole my blanket and I was very cold. It was a helpless feeling to lay there with nothing but that paper gown, my afflicted leg was hurting, the CRNA lady was talking about something, sticking leads in my chest, soon it was lights out...