It’s now Saturday morning, about 48 hours after the start of my 2.5 hour long surgery. I’ve been mostly napping during this time, and thankfully the pain has been a lot less than I expected. Thank you marvels of modern chemistry! I get the wound drains and I.V. removed today, maybe within a couple hours, then I’ll be “free” to move about.
By the way, I’m writing this on my laptop which is incapable, as far as I can tell, of doing what it’s supposed to do: connect to other computers. I can’t stand using the desktop system they have here mainly because the cords are too short and there’s no way to connect to work. And the connection is slow. And I’m sure I could keep going, but suffice it to say I’m writing this
now and will “back post” later.
Dr. Bose was late to surgery, due to traffic. I totally believe him. Traffic here is senseless. Imagine the rush of people leaving a concert, exiting out of the auditorium doors. That’s traffic here. I talked about “staying within the lines” when I was in Singapore. There are
no lines here to be concerned with. The car’s horn is the only piece of equipment needed to indicate your intentions to those around you. Blinker shminker.
Prior to surgery, I was given a sedative in my bum to make me sleepy. It worked. I felt sleepy (but now, two days later, I have very sore bum). However, being on a wheeled gurney parked underneath the surgery schedule board wasn’t very conducive to catching some winks, so I failed to see the point of the whole thing.
After Dr. Bose arrived they rolled me into the OR and got me ready. Blood pressure was taken and they inserted an IV into the top of my right hand. The general anesthetic flowed and I went night-night.
I awoke in the ICU feeling quite groggy, and with phlegm. Groggy is bad enough, but pile phlegm on top of it and it downright sucked. Since I hadn’t had anything to drink for about 16 hours, I was quite thirsty, so they fetched me a 7-Up that came in a 220 ml glass bottle. They put me under a space heater to keep me warm, and soon thereafter we played musical beds to get me back into my room.
There has been a nurse in my room virtually non-stop since then. I don’t know if it’s because my call button doesn’t work or if it’s just policy the first couple nights, but there’s been a nurse in my room even through the night. They curl up on the couch during the wee hours. Very bizarre.
NursesI have to talk for a minute about the nurses. First, they’re not “RN’s” like I had thought. They are mostly nurses in training having finished the first round of classes and somewhere in the middle a 2-year probationary period. The gaggle of nurses (referred to as “sisters”), are all in the 22-23 year-old range and could literally be sisters. I honestly can’t tell when the shift changes, unless they say “good morning” or give me some other type of cue that it’s a different person than before. Very dark skinned, short, wisp-like gals. One of them had a hard time putting a tight stocking on my leg because she simply didn’t have the hand strength or technique to do it properly.
Being a little inexperienced in the nursing field shows. They walk around with a sort of “deliberate unconfidence”. The sisters would appear to dawdle when performing some task, like giving me my food. She’d pick at the cellophane, adjust her uniform, pour the drink, remove the silverware from the napkin and place them in particular order of her liking, and just generally appear distracted. Cripes, just give me the food! It’s been sitting there for an hour already. It’s hard not to jump to the conclusion that they simply aren’t sure about what they’re doing.
English is clearly not one of the strong suits. It’s been very difficult to communicate with them at times, even for some seemingly simple subjects, like when she asked me, “Coffee?” after I had just finished drinking a cup. She didn’t know what “later” meant. I just got a blank stare, followed by a pause, followed by repetition of the question. All the while her head would do the same little bobbing thing. One time I asked a question and she said yes while shaking her head no. Argh! I think, now, that the random little Alzheimer’s-like motions are a cultural thing that I’ll have to get used to.
They use odd terminology, too. For instance, urinating is “passing urine”, and doing a #2 is called “passing motion”. Instead of “tonight” one girl said “today night”. Last night I almost laughed because the nurse babysitting me that night mentioned that I was very quiet and that I didn’t want to talk. She asked if I was as quite at home. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, “Umm, you don’t understand what I’m saying!”
Speaking of food… The folks here seem a little too preoccupied with what I want to eat or during the next 24 hours. Early morning drink, Breakfast, mid-morning drink, lunch, afternoon drink, dinner, night-time snack. Good grief. Good luck trying to get a simple cheese burger in India, btw. Read my earlier rant about food on airplanes. It’s like that, except the flight attendants know how to say “subcutaneous”. (During the time it took me to write this paragraph, two new nurses came in and asked if I had had breakfast. Don’t they take/read notes?)
Back to MeBut enough about the nurses. I’m now able to slide out of bed, stand up, and start walking with a walker. It’s cool that now my left leg can point in a direction it couldn’t since a number of years ago. It also feels like the left leg is longer than the right, which, in fact, it is, but the physical therapist explained that this feeling is normal because of all the tension that used to be on the affected joint. They’ll be taking the drain and IV out tomorrow, which will be swell. In the Intel mantra, “Unwire”, or something.
