The Surgery Story

OK folks, as promised, here is my surgery experience. Sorry if it's not completely coherent - feeling a little funny at the moment from the drugs.

Bret picked me up at 5am for the drive down to Aurora. So early. I did manage to squeak in 3 hours of sleep, but I was still exhausted. Checked in at 6am and paid my $250 co-pay (not too bad, but it's weird to think about paying someone to cut you open. At least they are well trained professionals!) And cute at that! Yes, my orthopedic resident was very attractive. Helped distract me from the nervousness that's for sure. So after checking in with the nurse, getting changed into the gown, and getting snuzzled up in some warm blankets - I love the warm blankets!! I want a blanket oven in my house! - it was time to get IV'd. Not the most pleasant experience, but also not as bad as I thought it would be. Then the anestheticians came and consulted with the Doctor, and it turned out that because they would be cutting a tendon in my upper calf, they would have to do a form of general anesthesia. It wasn't a "deep" level - in that they didn't have to intubate me, but they did still have to put some sort of tube down my throat - which has made it sore.

One minute I was in the operating room and laying down on the table, the next I was waking up in Stage 1 recovery, and I was shaking a lot. My muscles were shaking - like I was shivering, but I wasn't cold. They started putting a bunch of those warm blankets on me but they started making me hot. It was mostly my butt and leg muscles that were shaking, so I kept saying to them "I'm not cold - my butt is shaking. No my butt is shaking. I feel ok.. but my butt is shaking." I guess that's normal though - to shake like that when coming out of anesthesia. Then I guess my doctor came and talked to me, but I don't remember that. And then the nurse talked to me for a bit and was helping me get out of the phase. It took me a while to get used to the feeling of my foot - I think it was mostly numb, but it felt weird and it was hard to articulate, and I think the nurse was getting a little annoyed cause she couldn't tell whether I needed pain medication or not. But we figured it out eventually. My throat felt really swollen and it was hard to swallow. For a minute I was kind of freaking out, thinking I was having some weird reaction to something - but then the nurse got me some ice to suck on and that helped a lot. Then some graham crackers and cranberry juice. Yum.

Finally, around 11am, I was able to get dressed and go home. I took a pain pill shortly before leaving the hospital and on the drive back I was SO out of it. I kept giving Bret wrong directions (even though he knew where he was going), and when we got back to the house, he shot that video below.

The first few times of taking the pain pills it made me feel like this - hard to think, articulate words, understand anyone. Basically I just felt really dumb. But then last night, my friend Matt brought me some food, and that made all the difference. I think it was just a mostly empty stomach that was making the pills do that to me. Since I've eaten real meals, it hasn't happened.

For all of yesterday, my foot was under some sort of local or nerve block - not completely sure exactly what it was - but my foot was numb all day. I think it has worn off now, but it's kind of hard to tell because I still don't feel much. But that very well could be the pain killers. My foot hurt when I woke up this morning, even though I followed the pain meg regimen throughout the night. I think because it got pretty swollen, and it actually got better once I moved around a bit this morning. I've also been taking 600mg of ibuprofen in 4 hour intervals (off set with the pain med), to help control the swelling. So far so good!

And now... some gross feet pictures!