Still Here

Thanks for all the comments on my last post. I have been reading them, I've just not really felt up to posting this week.

I promised you more details of Saturday, but looking back, I'm not sure there's a whole lot more to tell.

I had to get up at 6am (urgh) so my Dad could drive me to the hospital for 7:15am. When I got there, I was shown to my room (ah the benefits of private healthcare, thank you employer), which could have been a hotel room, except that the bed was obviously a hospital one, and there were various call buttons around the room and in the bathroom.

Over the next hour or so various people came in to see me including the nurse who would be taking care of me before and after the op (male btw) and the anaesthetist who needed to check I was going to be ok with whatever they would use to knock me out. Oh yes, and they made me fill out a lunch request menu for later, which struck me as just a little cruel.

Then I just had to sit and twiddle my thumbs until about midday, which was when my op was scheduled. They brought me a lovely gown for the occasion (I still don't know how you're supposed to get into one of those things without help), a pair of frilly paper knickers (just delightful dahling) and even a pair of stockings (I haven't worn knee highs since junior school!). Of course I left it until the last minute to put all this on, no way was I sitting around all morning in that little ensemble.

They came to get me about 11:30 and walked me down to the anaesthesia room, where I had to get on the bed there and someone ran off with my dressing gown and shoes. I had about a 15 min wait there with a couple of the theatre nurses trying to make small talk while unfastening my gown and sticking bits of wire to my chest. Then the anaesthetist came in and did his thing with a needle in the back of my hand. He started squirting stuff into the socket on the needle telling me it was just something to make me relax (just a prelim to the main drug I thought), and the next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery crying.

Now I'm going to digress a little here. This is the third time I've been under a GA and every time I've woken up crying, but this time I actually found out why. I heard one of the nurses’ mention to another one that I was crying, and the other one said that if the patient (i.e. me) is anxious when they go under, they always wake up crying.

Now back to the recovery room. So I'm lying there and they strap me up to a BP monitor which automatically checks my BP every 5 mins (well it feels like that often anyway) and after a little while I'm pronounced alive and they wheel me back to my room to snooze. Of course I could have slept better if they didn't insist on coming in and checking my BP again every half hour or so, but I suppose they had to.

Now, aside from the fact that it was almost dead on midday when I went into surgery, I have absolutely no idea of times from then until 4pm when my Dad called up to see how I was. I was with it enough by then to take the call myself and let him know I was fine, but I actually had to ask him what time it was. This is because there were no clocks in my room. I had my watch of course but that was in my bag, which I couldn't reach from the bed, and I wasn't really up to getting out of bed at that point.

I think it was around 5pm when I first got up to go to the bathroom, clean myself up a bit and change into my nightie and put some knickers on (someone must have decided the paper ones were just too damn sexy for me and taken them off me again). It was also around that time that my stomach reminded me that we hadn't been fed since 11:30 the night before and DAMMIT WE WANT SOME FOOD! I did have to wait until teatime, which was 6pm when I was brought my selections from earlier, a ham sandwich (cut into triangles) with a salad garnish, a crème caramel, and a pot of tea. Being the true Brit that I am, I pounced on the pot of tea first and then made short work of the rest of it.

At around 7:30 the surgeon (my consultant) came by to see how I was doing and give me the good news that it had all been successful at which point I started snivelling, so I didn't really get the details of what the blockage was or how they cleared it, but I'm going to see him again in a few weeks, so I'll try and remember to ask him then. He also said that I could go home that evening if I wanted to, or I could stay over and go home in the morning. Much as I enjoyed the hotel atmos, I really just wanted my own bed and pillows and my Wookiee to cuddle, so when my Dad called again at 8pm I told him to come and get me. At 9pm, Dad and Wookiee showed up and I was escorted off the premises.

Since then I've been lounging around the house stitching and watching series’ of Stargate on DVD. I've managed to finish my GTG Sampler and two Mystery pieces, and start knitting two scarves and I will post pictures of all of these in time, although the Mystery pieces will have to wait until they're not a mystery anymore.