I DIDN’T DIE!!
I was admitted to the hospital bright and early at 5:30 AM. It is a nice, small hospital down here in St. Petersburg, FL and the process as very smooth and as Floridian as could be. My patient in-take guy (sorry, not sure what his real title is) was tall and somehow walked with the best posture I’d ever seen but also as laid back as I’d ever seen. He had long, gorgeous flowing white hair and a mustache to match. His tanned skin augmented his bulging muscles. I’m sure he would’ve made any snowbird lose their visor.
I was asked my name, date of birth, and which procedure(s) I was having about a dozen times from a dozen people (and I got it right every time!). The nurses complained about how thorough and particular my surgeon was with everything, so I took that as a very good sign. I met my surgical nurses, my nurse anesthetist, my anesthesiologist, my physician’s assistant, my surgeon, and then back to my nurse anesthetist. She said she was going to give me something to start, just for anxiety…
And then I woke up to the surgeon saying it was 9:30 PM. Wait, what? We were supposed to be done around 4 PM! I was of course in a stupor, but I thankfully didn’t panic. I was sure I heard something about they had to take teeth out or they didn’t get a joint done and would have to do surgery again. Something had to have gone wrong.
Apparently not. The surgery did go long. It was a very complicated surgery and the longer I’ve been interacting with the surgeon and staff, I’m realizing I may have been the first patient he’s done that much surgery to all at once. There were zero complications (i.e. NO lost teeth) and everything went exactly as planned. They did get a slightly later start in the OR (probably going back to the fact that my surgeon is very particular and careful) which just pushed the end time back.
Normally being done with surgery by 4 PM, the goal is to walk the hallway of the hospital at least 5 times. Since I was done so late, we weren’t sure that would happen. But, I’m a goal getter and Derek also was on a mission to help me, so together we walked at least that until 2:30 AM. I responded beautifully, and didn’t say no to my dilaudid.
