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Wednesday was the big day. I had my Endometriosis surgery at something like 7:30 in the morning. Micah and I showed up at 6:30 a.m. to the outpatient surgery center with a waiting room full of others either waiting to be put under or waiting to wait for the person who was put under.
I carried my herbs and vitamins in in a Chipotle bag.
(They told me to bring in any meds I was taking so they could make sure not to cause any cross reactions). Only when I walked in and saw the longing, hungry eyes of the others like me who had been told not to eat or drink anything after midnight did I realize that maybe I could have picked a more suitable bag for my medicines. There's just something about being told NOT to do something that makes you want to do it soooo badly. I mean, I never really eat between midnight and 6 a.m., but somehow it still felt like a major sacrifice.
We got all signed in and waited some more. Then I got called back and the nurse reassured me (after I asked her, becuase I'm that girl) that, yes, I would get to see Micah again and that they would come get him once I was all IV'd up and ready to go. I went into a little curtained off area with a nurse and two chairs, and she started asking me questions. No problem, I thought. I'm SO calm. Then they wheeled a bed into our little nook and I instantly felt queazy. I took a deep breath and moved on.
Then came the hospital gown, which I was glad to see now has two ties in the back so your derriere isn't constantly flappin' in the breeze. Nice work, people. They even provided me with a pair of socks. I was equal parts thankful, because I always have cold feet - and dismayed, because these were dreary gray socks and I had intentionally worn my most cheerful stripey socks so that the surgeons would have a nice ambiance to do their work in and maybe do an even better job. I mean, would it kill them to provide colored socks to the patients? GRAY?! Seriously.
After the peeing in the cup and the donning of hospital garb came the IV. My nurse was Chatty Cathy the whole time, telling me about her son's jaw surgery and comparing/contrasting it to the one I had when I was 15. Anytime people do this, I get a little nervous. I mean, I recognize that they're probably purposefully doing it to keep my mind off of the painful or uncomfortable thing that's going on. Annual OBGYN exam, bikini wax, sticking a needle into the bony part of your hand to squirt fluids into your veins. But a part of me starts panicking and has to try very hard not to yell at them, "Could you please pay attention to what you're doing!?!?! Are you forgetting what's going on here?!" I mean, the last thing I want is for them to get all caught up in their big story and stick the needle in the wrong place or, heaven forbid, leave the wax on too long.
Well, Chatty Cathy tells me after several minutes, "I don't know if I'm up against the arterial wall (or something like that) or what, but this is just not going in the way it should be." Hmm. First of all, I thought I might puke when she said arterial wall as I felt (and saw) her trying to push the needle in further, to no avail. I'm sitting there thinking, "See? I knew it. Her 'my son had jaw surgery' story was just too much for her." She apologized, bandaged that hand, walked over to the other hand and tapped it a few times before announcing that "Wow, this hand has way better veins!!" Perhaps next time she could start by looking at both hands and picking the one that has the best veins in the first place. Just sayin'.
The good news was that after all this was over, it was time to call my man back to hang out with me. I was sufficiently nervous at this point, so his face was a welcome sight. We had to wait for a bit for the doctor to get there, and waiting with all my hospital garb on and an IV in my arm has never been my strong suit. That's when I start to panic. Nobody knows I'm starting to panic - I look like the very picture of calm - I've done this before, after all. But feeling nauseous is always my red flag that tells me I'm starting to freak out. I told Micah what was going on, and he started telling me random updates about our friends that I thought were way too serious and detailed for pre-operation talk, but then I realized that he was just trying to get my mind off of what was about to come. And it was totally working.
Experiencing things like a surgery makes me love Micah even more than before. He wore slacks and a bright green golf shirt (one of my favorites of his) the day of the surgery. He wore that shirt on purpose, because it was happy and bright and cheerful and I was going to a not happy or bright or cheerful place. I love that he and I share an affinity for costumes and theme shirts. There's an episode in Gilmore Girls where Lorelai and Rory both separately ask their boyfriends "which dress goes best with a baby?" before going to a baptism. Micah wore the shirt that goes best with a wife who needs cheering up. Just before being whisked away to the operation room, the nurse asked Micah to put my little hair bonnet thingy on. He, always the jokester, put it over my face...I pulled it off and said, "Wow, that hat made me dizzy." All the sober people laughed at me - "yeah, it was the hat that made you dizzy!" Apparently they had shot me up with some starter anesthesia seconds before and that was the culprit. My hat theory seemed perfectly sensible to me!
I've never been awake (make that, I've never remembered being awake) in the actual operating room. My memories usually end somewhere around the time that I say goodbye to my loved ones...and even that is oftentimes fuzzy. This time, I actually remember a little bit of it. The room was freezing. There were people scurrying all around. There were piles of things everywhere - blankets, supplies, etc. They rolled my bed up next to the operating table and wanted me to help them as they hoisted me over. I remember thinking, "well, good thing I am still awake so I can help you!" They plopped me down on the operating table and, much to my surprise, there was a hole in the bed where my butt cheeks were meant to go! What!? I remember exclaiming about how funny this butt cheek hole was, but I don't remember the explanation of why it was there. I'm going to leave that one up to the imagination. All I know is, a day or so after surgery, when I was about to shower, I noticed that my derriere looked kindof blue - at first, I thought it was bruising, which I have in other locations due to the trauma of surgery. But it washed off. So. Mystery.
The next memory, after the butt cheek holed bed, that I have is one of those half memories that occur when you're waking up from anesthesia and you are only half there. If that. I was shaking wildly. Not like, "ooh, it's a little chilly in here" shivering, but full on SHAKING. I think my eyes were closed - if they were open, I still wasn't seeing through them. And I was in pain. I think I was probably moaning. Micah was there, but I don't think I knew that in my consciousness. He, in his bright green shirt of goodness, went immediately to get the nurse (I later found out) and told her that I was cold and needed more pain meds (I also later found out that he was a little freaked out by my shaking).
I remember her coming back (again, I still couldn't see) and saying, "Hon, do you think you can swallow a pill yet?" I would have laughed out loud, but my sense of humor wasn't awake yet. I don't know how I communicated through my 25% alive self that, no, I was not yet capable of swallowing a horse pill - or even swallowing liquids at all, or even opening my EYES for crying out loud. But somehow I let her know, and she IVd me some more pain meds and I conked back out. The next time I woke up, I wasn't in bad pain, I wasn't shaking, and I had this astronaut blanket thing on top of me that involves a big tube blowing hot air into my little paper blanket that was blown up like a raft. No, I'm not joking. And, yes, it totally did the trick.
The next hour and 45 minutes passed like this. Micah sat in a chair by my bed. I would wake up and probably slur something or other and he would say, "get some sleep" like he always does and then I would pass back out. For me, when I'm waking up from anesthesia, there's something deep within my body that knows something is wrong - it has gone to sleep in a way that is not normal - it has missed something, been half dead - and it is frantically trying to regain control and get back to work. The other part of me is just so dang tired and wants so badly to sleep. And my memory doesn't really work at that point, so I go through this battle about every 5-15 minutes. Luckily, Micah instinctively knows this (I think me trying desperately to speak when only slurs come out might have given it away), so he tells me, every time I open my eyes, to go back to sleep, to rest. Thank you, please.
Eventually, my eyelids could be pried open, my words started to make a little more sense, and the length of time that I was awake went from 2 seconds to 2 minutes, etc. When I wake up from surgery, I oftentimes find myself in a state of intense gratitude. Gratitude for Micah, who I'm so happy to see and so happy that I love him so much and so happy that I have someone in my life who makes me feel so safe and relieved just simply by sitting by my bed and feeding me ice chips with a plastic spoon. It's this visceral feeling of relief when I know that he's there beside me again. The surgery is over. I'm so confused and so out of it and my body is mostly comatose, but Micah is here.
The Wake Up is the worst part of surgery for me. The pain can be managed and is something that can be overcome in time. Pain is pain. The grogginess and dizziness of the drugs is obnoxious, but not a big deal. But The Wake Up carries with it a lot of fear and anxiety for me. All of my bad surgery memories were during The Wake Up. You feel very vulnerable when your brain is only partially functioning and you're incapable of talking or moving or even opening your eyes, but you can hear.
2 out of the 4 times I've had surgery, I've woken up feeling HORRIBLY nauseous, sometimes vomiting, and very afraid. One time, I genuinely thought I couldn't breathe because I had a tube down my throat - I completely panicked. I was 15, and signaled to my parents that I needed a pen to write with. Tears rolled silently down my cheeks as I wrote, "Can't Breathe. Help." I still remember that moment vividly. Another time, I woke up (and by woke up, I mean I became conscious to it, but wasn't awake enough to speak or understand) to the sound of someone screaming very loudly. I was in the hospital recovery room all alone (before they would let Micah come join me) and incapable of speaking, and I was very afraid. For me, waking up to something like screaming and not knowing where I was or what was happening or being able to gather my strength to force words out of my mouth was very terrifying. It is a vivid memory of mine from my last Endometriosis surgery at the hospital 3 years ago.
So most of my energy and prayer were focused around The Wake Up going smoothly. This surgery wasn't at the hospital. The staff was amazing and told me they would go get Micah right when I started to wake up (which was before I consciously started to wake up, so as soon as I was aware of anything, he was there). There was no screaming. It was peaceful and quiet and not at all terrifying. And, to top things off, I was only mildly nauseous when I woke up, thanks to the two or three anti-nausea methods the anesthesiologist used, God bless him!
I told Micah, in my slurry speech, that I was SO happy with how The Wake Up had gone. He was texting my family to tell them I had said that and, by the time he finished typing the text message, I was passed out again. This is how we spent almost two hours. He fed me ice chips and told me to go back to sleep. The nurse brought me Sprite when I could sit up a little. Micah told me stories as I dozed in and out. At one point, he told me the report the doctor had given him after the surgery, and he started to pull pictures out of my Chipotle bag. Pictures of my innerds and the Endometriosis. I quickly told him that I was not feeling that good, and definitely needed to wait a while before seeing those. Ugh.
I spent the rest of Wednesday on cloud 9 - like, seriously, so happy - all I kept thinking was that I was SO glad it was behind me and I was SO glad that The Wake Up hadn't been something I'll be traumatized by for years to come. Just like that, it was over. All uphill from here.
I am thankful for a Dr. who is an amazing person and a great doctor. I've dealt with some Doctors who are just Doctors...not really people. This man is a PERSON...with tenderness and compassion and a heart - who is also incredibly talented at his job. I count it as a real gift to have several doctors like this in my life right now. And, most of all, I'm thankful for a Mom who has taken a week out of her life to come here and care for Douglas while I'm recovering and to make me jello and super healthy soup and keep things running around here - and a husband who I freaking LOVE and who can calm my spirit when I'm afraid and nervous and whose presence brings me peace even when I'm only slightly coherent. I feel very, very blessed.
