surgery chronicles

I really prided myself in never having had surgery or breaking a bone. Whenever we play the game "Two Truths, One Lie," I used those two as my back-ups. Now I can't use the surgery one.

I was in the hospital for 3 or 4 days. I'm not sure how long, because when you're lying in a bed eating and watching TV, time just blurs into a blob.

The first thing I want to say is that I hate needles. Absolutely hate it. I think I started counting down the number of needles I would need - one for a blood test, the IV, and the anesthesia each. I got poked way more times than I expected. I don't even remember how many needles they stuck in me. Eleven.

I curled up in a ball so they could numb my legs, and I was terrified because I expected it to hurt. They wiped my back before they actually injected the anesthesia; I jerked because I was anticipating a needle instead of a wet wipe. After that, the nurse told me to sit still. Mr. Doctor held me down, and they injected away. It felt weird. And it hurt.

The funny thing is, when they knock your legs out like that, it feels like your legs are in the same position when they knocked you out. So it felt like my legs were straight, even when they were bent... And then I realized this is probably what it feels like to have your legs amputated (fear of my life realized).

Then they took me in the room, and I remember the doctor saying that 5 in 100 people experience side effects such as nausea because of the anesthesia. Of course, I'm one of those 5 people, so I threw up while on the operating table. Nasty. Probability never works well for me.

The procedure was supposed to be that they stick a needle and some kind of electrode in my thigh at two or three different places and burn the nidus (the nucleus of my osteoid osteoma). They started drilling in my leg, and when they hit the bone, they couldn't get any further because apparently I had "mature cortex." Whatever that means. Anyway, the doctor lady shoved (and it was weird, because I could kind of feel the pressure of her pushing down, but didn't feel any pain) and shoved, but the needle wasn't going anywhere. She called over Mr. Doctor, and he tried, but he wasn't getting anywhere. They pulled various needles out and tried different things, and they were definitely getting frustrated. I was getting terrified. I saw the doctors' blood stained hands and it looked nasty. I was thinking, "What if the anesthesia runs out?"

After 30 minutes or so, they finally got the needle in the right place, with a sigh of relief. Ms. Doctor told me that if I turned the other way that I could see the screen and where the needle was. I didn't look.

The second needle went much faster. They burned the tumor (I think). Then they put me in a recovery room so that they could make sure that my anesthesia was wearing off the right way. They kept on testing if I could feel cold on my stomach, and they asked me to give them a number out of 10.. So I gave them a different number every time and they thought something was wrong because I said 7 first and then it went down to 4. I realized that they wanted my feeling to come back, so I started giving them the right numbers. I like giving people what they want.

All in all, what an experience. I realized how much fear I actually have. I'm scared of a lot of things. It's easy to say I trust and have faith when I'm in a bubble of a college campus, shielded from much of life, but wow. Harder in a hospital, that's for sure.