Recovery Room

I was told I was shivering when I was wheeled out of the operating room, which might explain the lavender electric blanket on my lower extremities, but not necessarily where my desperate pre-op need to pee had gone.  This was even more troubling than the plastic sea of purple over my legs.  I was  only slightly comforted by the fact that the pre-op nurse was highly complimentary of my hand veins.  She knows that how I got my man.

In any case, my compliments to the anesthesiologist.  I’d assumed a local anesthetic, which added to my furor over the solid foods ban, which, since the surgery was delayed, stretched to thirteen and a half hours.  But when I was told that I’d receive a heaping helping of night-night juice, I was secretly relived.  This way, I’d experience weapons-grade hypoglycemic conditions and any other potentially humiliating Medical Moments while blissfully unaware.

I remember walking into the operating room; I remember setting my arms onto a Papoose board, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since I tore my chin open after a fall in 1981; and, since this was 1981, that one had an actual Indian painted on it.  I remember one of the nurses leaning over to add a load of something liquid to the saline solution which was already doing a bang-up hydration job.  “This will relax you a little,” she said, because in Operating Room world, “relax you a little” = “making the world go away pretty much instantaneously.”  And indeed, when the surgeon summoned Josh The Pilot from the waiting room to inform him that I would continue eating for two for the foreseeable future, he was also told I was “just starting to wake up.”

It was another hour before I opened my eyes and immediately demanded information, my husband, and some sort of liquid, but not necessarily in that order.  I was also given the World’s Most Exquisite Graham Cracker and not nearly enough ginger ale, but the very best thing about all of it was that it stayed where I put it.

We departed with a wheelchair and other lovely parting gifts, including hospital-brand ChapStick, an extremely useful icepack made out of paper, and a brochure instructing me to avoid driving, chainsaws, and “major decisions” for the next twenty-four hours.  Well, good thing the American Idol season is over.

there was a bag of chocolate organic graham crackers shaped like bunny rabbits, too, but they tasted like bunny poop at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com