Back among the living
Part III

Continued from Friday:

I guess I'm getting a little tired of telling it all in detail. The preliminary part was the important part, anyway, at least to me--the scary part. At this point there wasn't any backing out, any second thoughts. The process was in motion, and all I could do was try to relax, try to trust in the medical professionals, and in God, and go with it.

The gurney I was lying on was flat, with no adjustments like a regular hospital bed. There were a couple of pillows under my head, but not enough to actually sit up. I could see across the room to a woman on the other side, who had her arms folded underneath her head to keep it propped up; I tried doing that with one arm, but that was uncomfortable, too. I kept trying to hold my head up, and Bob kept telling me to relax, just lie back and relax, so I would do that, then feel like I was disengaging from the situation, so I would try to sit back up a little bit.

But disengaging from the situation was probably exactly what I needed to do.

Bob leaned over and kissed me, and told me he loved me, and I told him I loved him, too, and they snapped a plastic cap over my head and wheeled me away into the operating room. So weird to be in that position, I think. So helpless. It just felt so strange.

I looked around the room a little--lots and lots of inexplicable equipment, tray after tray of medical instruments, about a half dozen people standing around waiting for me. For me.

I looked up at the ceiling, at huge banks of lights, I guess they must have been. They wheeled the gurney up next to the operator table and told me to scoot over onto it. I think that surprised me a little--I maybe expected them to lift me onto it. It was awkward, with everything attached to me, but I made it. A nurse came and put an oxygen mask over my face. She said, "This is just oxygen. I know it smells a little weird, but that's just the plastic. It's just oxygen." And then someone else, a male voice, said, "We're going to give you something to make you sleep," and that was that.

My next conscious memory is of waking up, slowly, in the recovery room. My range of focus was small. I vaguely remember a nurse standing next to me, talking to me, asking me how I felt, but I couldn't tell you what the rest of the room looked like, whether there was anyone else there, or not. I remember that I kept trying to move my right hand up onto my stomach, and she kept telling me to leave it down by my side because they could get better readings that way (there was a vital signs monitor clipped to one of my fingers).

I remember feeling slow, that it took me a few seconds to process the information when I answered their questions--it felt strange to talk, like I was in a dream. I didn't feel sick, which was one of the major things I'd been afraid of, and I didn't seem to be in a lot of pain, which was the other one. Discomfort, but no unbearable pain. They eventually decided I was awake enough, I guess, because an orderly showed up to wheel me to my room.

I was still afraid of getting sick, and afraid that the ride down the hallways, flat on my back, looking up at the ceiling, would do it, but I was also afraid to close my eyes, afraid that would bring on motion sickness, too. This seemed so strange, too, I guess: being wheeled down the hall, feeling still so out of it, looking at other people, normal people, standing around, waiting for elevators, visiting their friends and relatives.

They got me into my room, backed and filled until the bed (I guess someone must have lifted me onto that at some point) was positioned in the room, next to the window, and then Bob was there, and then my parents were there, and everything was okay. There was a clock on the wall in front of me; it was 11:00. Right on time.

Someone (my mother?) said, "You don't look as bad as I thought you would," which really wasn't as bad as it sounded--or maybe it was, "You look better than I thought you would." No, it was the first. It made me laugh. I knew what she meant. I didn't look near death. I didn't feel near death, either, just kind of spacey and out of it.

I had the IV still attached securely to my left hand, and someone had moved the vital signs monitor over to my left hand, too. I had oxygen feeding into my nose, and at some point had been catheterized. And there were weird "boots" on my feet that inflated every few seconds with a PSSSSSH sound. My mom was interested in the boots, and I said, "You can look!" and she moved the sheet to see them.

I remember feeling incredibly relieved that they hadn't had to do abdominal surgery, that the less-invasive vaginal procedure had been possible, but I don't remember how I knew that. I asked Bob, and he says they (he or my parents) probably told me, and they probably did, but I don't remember it. I just remember feeling thankful.

My parents left after a few minutes, but I don't remember why--to get something to eat, maybe? Probably really just to let me rest. Bob said that he had rushed home once he knew I was out of surgery, to email a few people, to make some phone calls, and to update The Bob Report with my condition. As my parents walked out, I said, "Will you call Lynn?" (My sister--she had called the night before, and I knew she would be worried about me.) They said, "We already did. We called everybody."

There was something wrong with the hospital bed--the nurse couldn't get it to raise, so a maintenance man came and fixed it. He said, "Sometimes you just have to take it all the way down first." And the nurse showed the morphine pump to me--there was a cord with a button on the end attached to the IV, and if I felt pain, I could press the button and get a dose of morphine.

I couldn't overdose, though--it only let you have a certain amount, and only every eight minutes. Like I said, I wasn't feeling any unbearable pain, but at that point I was kind of afraid that I would, so I kept pressing the button. If it was too early, nothing would happen, but if it was time, it would beep. A nurse told me later that the pump registered that I had pushed it a total of 15 times--I stopped at around 1:00--and she said that was good.

Everyone kept telling me I was doing good, I was doing fine, and in that weird state between waking and sleeping, coming out of the anesthesia, on narcotic pain medication, just sort of doing what anyone told me to do, letting anyone do whatever they needed to to me, the praise pleased me, made me feel good. I felt proud that I'd survived, maybe. Glad that it was over, certainly. And somehow good that I was doing what I was supposed to do.

I dozed a little while Bob worked the crossword puzzle in the newspaper, and my parents came back at some point. They brought a little stuffed cat from the gift shop. It had a mouse attached to one paw by a string; you pulled the string, and the cat would meow and purr. My mother said, "There were pictures! Did you see the pictures?" I said, "Picture?" Pictures?? Bob asked me if I wanted to see them, and I told him no, not yet. Maybe never.

To be continued . . .