4:45 A.M. My wife escorts me to “A.M. Admit” -- by 5:15 I have an IV hooked up to my hand and the nurse has drawn a little smiley face on the tape. The gesture helps. I get a “carnaval ride” on the stretcher up to the sixth floor. I have another nurse asking the same questions as the A.M. Admit nurse. Everyone is warm and professional.
I never see my surgeon before the procedure. I don’t remember “getting the gas,” so to speak. To be honest, as an ex-EMT, all this medical stuff, the needles and other pointed, sharp paraphenalia -- doesn’t bother me.
The thought of what the surgeon is about to do to my butt doesn’t really bother me.
Surving the GA, THAT is what bothers me.
So I say to my anesthesiologist (Dr. Green (pseudonym))…”Hey, it’s pretty safe, just 5 outta a million never make it back out of the OR…”
Well,” he chimes in, “Actually it’s more like one in twenty-thousand…”
I quickly change the subject…
I awake from the operation in a cruel, hard chill..it feels like a cherry-bomb has gone off in me arse. A kind soul quickly delivers one…then two…then three (maybe even four) doses of dilaudad IV until I’m happy and pain-free.
A young, thirteen-year-old male is in severe distress on a table nearby…the staff is trying to console him. The poor fellow is crying out in moans and begging them not to touch his foot.
I am truly distracted from my own plight, suddenly humbled.
In minutes my wife is back with me and I don’t have long to wait to get my room. Did I say they wanted to keep me overnight? This carnaval ride is even better than the first, though muuuuch slower.
So I’m sitting in my bed, stuffing down that oh-so-delicious clear liquid diet product. I feel nauseated…soon I’m grabbing a pan…one belch and I’m suddenly NOT nauseated (of course, the shot of phenergan didn’t hurt).
I was completely unaware of how much of a pin-cushion my “cheeks” were about to become.
From noon to about three O’clock, everything’s FINE. I’m doing crossword puzzles, despite the Percocet haze. No pain.
Then at around 3:30 I realize that I haven’t peed. I feel the need. Then I discover the truth, what I feared would recur from my appendectomy four years ago. I couldn’t pee.
Two hours later I’m hopping and hinting broadly to the staff that I might need a cath…just in and out to open up the pipes. I finally get one. The urgency gets worse instead of better when it’s inserted, even though I can see urine flowing down the tubing.
My nurse states, “If there’s more than 300 CC’s, I have to leave it in.
“Please take it out, I can’t stand this!”
“It’s up to 275 CCs, I have his orders not to take it out…
The woman was a saint. She saw how it was killing me, and even though I produced quite a bit more than 300ccs, she took it out. But it would be morning before my bladder began to feel normal again -- throughout the night my bladder always felt half-full. My pipes now opened up by the brutual intrusion of the latex catheter, I could pee again.
That, my friends, was the worst part of this whole experience. I have yet to have any seriously bad pain in the ass, except immediately after the surgery. It was REAL sore after the ride (sixty miles) home from the hospital. It took it a couple of hours to return to a relatively pain-free state, but that’s where I’m at right now as I write…sitting in my desk chair on my left butt cheek. I doubt I'm going to heal as fast as Giz seems to have, but the outlook seems promising.
No BM yet, but I feel a STRONG urge.
The throne awaits...
Hugh