The Surgery (dictated to Kari again)

The ER nurses gathered up my belongings including my mismatched shoes, made me strip naked, and they wheeled me down the hallway to the operating room. We stopped outside the room for the Anesthesiologist pep talk during which she, by law, was required to tell me the 73 possible things that could go wrong during the surgery. By this time I was fairly anxious and thus even more chatty and annoying than usual. I kept interrupting her speech with questions and comments that totally messed up her flow. She kept laughing and forgetting where she was in her speech. She said things like, "women tend to be more nauseas than men" to which I responded, "And I tend to be a woman." Her laughter caused much confusion and she told me I kept throwing her off track. She concluded by reminding me that she might break one of my teeth as she shoved the breathing tube down my throat. I pointed out to her at the end of the conversation that while I had been a bit nervous before her speech, I was now pretty confident that I was going to die and that her speech had been less than helpful.

I then said, "Goodbye" to Bart and gave him instructions as to how to express love to each of my children. Various amounts of effusiveness were to be used. I mentioned a few friends and my parents and expressed my love to Bart and got a little teary as I said goodbye to him for what might have been the last time.

They wheeled me in to the OR and instructed me that I was somehow supposed to fit my body on a very, very, thin, cold hard slab of metal called an OR bed. With much difficulty I shuffled myself into the most uncomfortable "bed" I can ever remember being on. In came Dr. Risty and her ever so helpful assistants. After she introduced me I said, "Oh, I've watched Grey's Anatomy, I know about you people. You love to cut people open." I then was able to achieve my goal for the first time that night with Dr. Risty by getting her to laugh out loud. I asked, "So who all has been sleeping together in the on-call room?" They assured me that as far as they knew nobody had ever had sex in the on-call room at this hospital.

I remember very little about the next two hours. I think they lied to me when they said they were giving me a little oxygen because I woke up quite groggy a couple of hours later. In the recovery room I was asked a lot of questions by a nurse whose name I do not remember (there have been a lot of those). Even in my half sedated state of mind nearly every response to each question was in my clouded mind hilarious. To be honest, at this point I have no clue what I said and as Kari is typing this I'm starting to worry a bit about what it might have been. The only thing that I do remember is that I overheard her preparing the nurse for my arrival. After she hung up the phone I asked her, "But did you tell her I am fun?!" She said she had forgotten to tell her that. After which I feigned deep distress. As they wheeled me out of the recovery room to see my husband, I yelled back over my shoulder, "You should have warned them that I'm fun!"