A Chop, Chop Here & A Chop Chop There

I’ve never been big on sharing health news. I consider such things to be my private information until I have processed it ... and by then it is history, anyway. This time is different since I discussed its approach before it happened.

As you might’ve been able to tell, I survived my recent surgical adventure. Overall, it was a smooth experience. I showed up when I was supposed to, got checked in by a group of great professionals, got an assortment of drugs designed to make the experience pain-free, and then after being wheeled into an operating room that featured a table full of power tools, took a nap.

After waking up and getting dressed, I escaped the premises without feeling anything below my left knee thanks to an effective nerve block. A short while later, my phone notified me I had new implant information on my medical records app. How efficient — I checked the app and found the name, model, and serial number of an assortment of screws and wires that will probably be with me the rest of my life, along with the information on a graft injectable that was used. Odd feeling. The cyborg part of my life has begun. (Cue, power wrench sound from Devo's Are We Not Men?.

Over the last few days, the nerve block wore off and an assortment of pain pills I am taking in its place has ensured my anesthesiologist called a smooth landing. It has been, more or less. Getting around for the most basic things has required a little relearning and some mechanical help (crutches, a grabber, and a knee scooter). Per my ortho, it’ll be about two months before I am healed enough to use my newly rebuilt ankle to bear weight. That will be when I can figure out if this entire process was successful.

What started as an accident on the aft end of a C-141 that resulted in a fall out of the aircraft onto the tarmac in Guam has finally been fixed. Given that the fall occurred before most of the tech used to repair it existed, the delay was probably a good thing.

I didn’t run into any classmates from kindergarten this time, but Andrea was a much nicer nurse than any Army nurse I ever ran into. I guess there are tradeoffs.

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All the King's Horses and One Immensely Talented Ortho Surgeon

When I was eight, I went into the hospital alone for the first time  — well, the first time I remember. I was there to have my tonsils out and while I don’t recall being afraid, at that age and situation I had to be. Luckily, the kid in the bed next to me (it was an Army hospital children’s ward) was talkative and. after talking for a few minutes, we discovered we had gone to kindergarten together. While this might be no big deal in the civilian kid world, for a military brat it meant that even though we had both lived in three different states since we last saw each other, we were together again. He was there for an operation on his eyes.

There were no TVs in the ward, so we spent the night talking and getting yelled at by the nurse for talking. The next morning, they wheeled all the beds in the ward out in a long line, and we were paraded down to the operating room to wait our turn. Sometime later, I woke up back in the ward with the worst sore throat of my young life. My friend had returned too, with patches over both eyes.

The most memorable thing that happened that day was when I puked in my bed and my friend was yelling his head off for a nurse to come help. When he could finally get one, she changed out the bedding while cursing me for not calling her sooner. Not sure how I was supposed to yell for her with a throat that had just had tonsils yanked out. By the way, not all Army nurses look like McMurphy.

Later that day, I went home. I never saw my classmate again, and I carried an aversion to nurses for a long while after. I got over it, even dedicating my book POMSILv2 to them.

Over the course of my life, I have had a few surgeries but never ran into another classmate.

Tomorrow, I am having my ankle repaired from an injury I suffered while in the Air Force. I guess after more than a few years it’s time to make my ankle work the way it should. According to what I’m told, I will enjoy a medically induced haze for a few days to mask the pain. So, if I take a few days to reply to an email, that is why.

Just didn’t want you to wonder if I fled the country to avoid being captured by some espionage agency I wrote about a little too realistically… then again, maybe I did.

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