Happy Birthday to Me

Another early start – had to report by 9am and Chris agreed to spend the day with me.  He’d hang around while they did their thing and would then sit with me until I was cleared to go home.  Yet another one of those best laid plans going awry.

Taken through to day ward around 9:30 and seems I’m last on the surgery list, so lovely nurse says she’ll see if she can’t bump me up.  Sure enough, some time later I’m now likely to go in somewhere around 10:30.

It’s boring just sitting there waiting on your own – Chris has gone for a smoke and having been told I won’t be ready before 1:30 ish has sensibly decided to go home and will await my call to return.

Any how, they decide to do an ECG to make sure my heart is doing its thing (what, no test to see what my stress/fear levels are like right now?) as they were surprised it hadn’t been done at the pre-op.  By this time my nurse is Rose and she’ll end up looking after me all day.

Waiting, waiting.  Resorted to reading women’s trash mags.  Specialist and anaesthetist have been to see me and just as I’ve almost finished reading the last of the women’s mags it’s time to take my walk to the operating theatre.

I’ve had surgery on both my knees at various times and this is actually one part of operations I don’t mind.  They take you in, lie you down, cover you with a nice heated blanket, make sure you’re who you’re meant to be, shove a needle in your arm and next thing you know you’re in recovery.

While this is obviously lost time, I always seem to recall that it is one of the deepest sleeps and therefore most “refreshing” I have experienced.  For what seems like an instant, but obviously is a lot longer, you don’t have a care in the world.