“SIX POUNDS, SEVEN
OUNCES! Congratulations!! It’s a benign uterine fibroid tumor! You must be so proud!”
He got the message. No hard feelings.
I thought I’d be able to go home the next day, but even the hospital has its requirements before you can say Au revoir…and it involves more than just holding down food. But I’ll spare you the graphic details. So, I wrote, read, and watched T.V. with a Zen-like affirmation that any accidental bun-in-the-ovens were a thing of the past.
Where were my visitors though, you ask? There were none, as I was keeping this procedure on the Q.T. As I said a couple of entries ago, it’s nobody’s damn business by my own. (And what I choose to share in here, of course) Some of my family members tend to be a little too melodramatic about such experiences. (Code for ‘blabber-mouths’)
My last conscious
memory on Tuesday morning was getting wheeled down the hallway on a gurney, and reminding my mom to wake me up in time for the season finale of 'GRIMM'. As
soon as I turned a corner, that’s all she
wrote, folks, as the phrase goes. Lights out. So I didn’t have a clue what
was going on around me for the next eight hours. George Clooney could’ve been
reprising his E.R. role as Dr. Doug
Ross, and I still would’ve been in anesthesia La-La-Land.
I had some groggy
moments later; flashes of a room of gurney’d folks...medical staff sporting
blue scrubs, with faces lit up by computer screens suggested I’d made it through
the procedure.
So, I guess having
stayed up til nearly 3 a.m., making out my ‘Last Will & Statements’ was
moot. But, ya never know. Better safe than sorry.
After
gaining full consciousness, I was pretty much in the moment: tender in the
middle of myself, and not feeling quite as ‘scooped out’ as I thought I would
be, but knowing I was. The morphine definitely took the edge off, and I liked
it up til the point it made me nauseous, thirteen hours later. (And, boy! Does it
come on fast!) Also, one doesn't appreciate that incision pain until you have to sneeze. Talk about "Ouch!" :(
The
nurses that looked after me were a great bunch. (Mary, Gayle, Bridget, Tamara, Iris, and Katie) And—I beg you to believe me
that I’m not 'tooting-my-own-horn' about this—apparently, I was a dream-patient. I
wasn’t one of those ‘Call-button-divas’ they dread. (“Bring me more drugs,
dammit! I’m in pain!!” “Where’s my Jell-O?!” “Why haven’t I seen my doctor? She
said she’d be here!”) I can only assume
that my caregiver background made for a more empathetic and humored approach
regarding the staff. IOW, I was able to ‘talk-the-medico-talk’.
And,
when it came to my surgeon’s interns needing to do a wound-check of
my incision, I was as courteous as one could be toward one of the opposite sex. I’ve
always preferred female physicians; regarding my lady-parts, one of my medical-professional requirements is that one must also have lady-parts. So, I dipped into my Downton Abbey lady-like self, and asked
the male intern who showed up if he wouldn’t mind “stepping out with my Mom for a moment so
that I could consult with the ladies.”
He got the message. No hard feelings.
I thought I’d be able to go home the next day, but even the hospital has its requirements before you can say Au revoir…and it involves more than just holding down food. But I’ll spare you the graphic details. So, I wrote, read, and watched T.V. with a Zen-like affirmation that any accidental bun-in-the-ovens were a thing of the past.
Where were my visitors though, you ask? There were none, as I was keeping this procedure on the Q.T. As I said a couple of entries ago, it’s nobody’s damn business by my own. (And what I choose to share in here, of course) Some of my family members tend to be a little too melodramatic about such experiences. (Code for ‘blabber-mouths’)
The
after-care instructions are gonna kill me though; no driving for two weeks! Now,
how the hell am I gonna get my Starbucks??
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