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| Left foot before |
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| on the way home |
One of the worst parts of having a surgical procedure done (by choice - not due to an accident) is the anticipation. I've been waiting on this puppy for a good 20 years. I thought about doing it in highschool but never felt ready (it was always track season or the fall play season or "too hot" in the summer). Thinking back I feel dumb and hope I had a better reason for not getting it over with then. Later in life I hit periods where my health insurance wouldn't cover much and I couldn't afford the excessive out of pocket expenses (hello grad school!). But now I had no excuse - I've got my super duper fiance to look out for me, and magical health insurance from my job. (Seriously - $10 co pay for a 4 to 5K surgery is amazing!).
So on Tuesday May 8th, which was coincidentally the third anniversary of me meeting my fiance, we headed down to Danbury Hospital's Duracell Center for Ambulatory Surgery, which sounds like a science fiction plot already. I was getting the first bunionectomy of two - left foot now, and hopefully right foot in December. In the shortest of explanations I can give this means cutting of some excess bone around the ball of one's foot and then breaking and realigning the big toe so that it sits straight and not crooked. Yeah, ouch. Instead of giving you the gory play-by-play I'll mention a few likes, dislikes and "hmm, that's odd"s about my experience.
The funny thing about medical records is they never disappear or change until something goes wrong and you update them. One time I went to an emergency clinic near the town I was born in and they still had my address listed as the one given the day my mother gave birth to me. Yes, it's been 30 years lets update that! So this time I'm in Danbury hospital where I spent the majority of my childhood and the nurse confirmed a few demographics on me. Emergency contact: pretty much the same as when I was 7, plus throw on my fiance's #. Religion: Episcopalian?! LOL... My mother must have put that down when I was four and she changed denominations every few months. I just asked them to leave that one blank. God fordbid I did die from anethesia - it would be pretty hard to explain to a pastor about my half-Jew, Catholic upbringing and Buddhist philosophies.
Other good things: although they make you strip down and put on a stupid hospital gown (is it really necessary to lose my underwear for foot surgery?) at least the hospital gown could connect to a neat-o warming machine that was like a backwards vacuum with hot air. The anesthesiology nurse was probably the nicest person to me. She always gave me a quick heads up on what was coming next and once we reached the operating room I don't remember a darn thing. Next time I woke up Mike was walking in the door of the recovery room and it felt like 5 minutes went by. They gave me ginger-ale for the ride home and I even got wheel chaired to the car.
One thing that super creeped me out was that aside from talking to me for 3 or 4 minutes before the surgery in my waiting room, my surgeon didn't give me much info on what to expect nor did he stop by and check on me after the surgery. He asked if I had any questions and I was able to think of a few. Should I ice? "Sure if it helps". I've decided he's so nonchalant that I'm going to call him Dr. Ice. He did tell my fiance everything "went well and there were no unexpected complications". Well thanks but when I wake up with a huge orange band of color around my leg where it looks like someone stuck on a lot of gauze it would be nice to know why! A little "by the way we'll be putting a tourniquet on you and cleaning with iodine, so don't be alarmed that you look like a space alien (or snooki)" would have been nice. At least that's what I assume the orange and gauze was for...
So I survived my day in the hospital and then it was on to recovering at home. I had never really utilized pain killers before, aside from the half an oxycodone I took the day I had my wisdom teeth removed and then had the trippiest dreams of my life and stuck to advil thereafter. So, this was going to be interesting. For the first several hours I still couldn't really feel my foot but once the feeling started to come back - whoa nelly! Thankfully I tolerated the Percoset better than expected because otherwise I might have lost my mind. Yes, this hurt much more than the time I dropped a lap top on my foot and almost passed out.
Thankfully my Dr. was pretty accurate when he said the first two or three days were the worst. Now it's Friday and I don't feel like crying every time I need to go to the bathroom because any circulation in my foot would mean unbearable stabbing pain. I'm hoping to taper off the pain meds soon and start utilizing the foot a little more since I don't think I'm really supposed to be using crutches at all. I also learned not to spend too much time sitting on the futon as it hurt my back and exacerbated the whole ordeal.
Hopefully next time I'll be hobbling around a little better!
