My Final Surgery

The reason I haven’t been posting lately is because I've been dealing with my second and final surgery: this time to remove the bone spurs on my right shoulder.

As she did last time, Mother came in to help me. She drove me to the surgical center bright and early Monday morning where I got started on getting checked in. Right away I came across an obstacle in the road (metaphorically speaking): they had my date of birth wrong. This caused great confusion since they were expecting a 17 year old patient, not a 47 year old patient. But once they resigned themselves to that fact they were able to reprint all the reams of paperwork required, and we got to move out of the administration office and into the Pre-Op section of the building.

Here is where I ran in to the second obstacle of the day: the lady leading me back there just disappeared without telling me what to do or where to go. I was stranded in the middle of a hallway with no idea which door I was supposed to go into. I stood there like a lost child for several minutes before somebody happened by and took pity on me by pointing me in the right direction.

The right direction in this case happened to be the disrobing room. I’m sure it has a different name, but that’s what I did. I got undressed, put on the hospital gown they provided, and put all my stuff into the locker assigned to me. Then I stood around for a while again, because I AGAIN did not know what to do or w here to go.

Are you getting the idea here? This place was CONFUSING and CHAOTIC and LOUD and just plain CONFUSING. Not at all like the hospital was. I will say one thing in their favor, though: everybody in there was happy. Well, so maybe not the patients – but the employees all were.

Anyway, eventually a nurse directed me to an intake room. She was very nice but had a lot of problems getting an IV into me. I ended up blowing 5 veins before she finally succeeded. I still have the bruises on my arm where she tried: three different locations! It was brutal: I have to admit I was crying by the time she finally got one. I kept saying “I don’t want to be here!” and she just kept apologizing…

And then we waited. Check in was at 7:00 in the morning with surgery scheduled for 8:30 – however, for whatever reason, they were running late. As near as I can remember, surgery didn't happen until sometime after 11:00. They must have given me some drugs ahead of time, because I just came in and out of awareness periodically, until one time I asked “Did it happen?” and somebody answered “Yes”

I had to ask them to get Mother, I do remember that. She came right away, though, and got the rundown on aftercare from all the doctors. Apparently it went well: I ended up without a tear (thankfully) just a mighty large spur that got ground off. Doctor was pleased, and said my recovery should go well.

Finally I got home around 3:00 in the afternoon.