A post a Day APAD Day Six… Not knowing is the worst

Surgery Day

I’m sitting in the preop room with Thing Two. It’s been a long time since I felt like I had all the answers when my children come to me with questions or for advice. To be honest, they are both smarter and stronger than I am. I’m okay with that. Even glad for it!

I THOUGHT I was going to be a nervous wreck waiting for her to go into surgery, but at the moment, I’m feeling very calm. While we were driving to the hospital this morning, I had the answer (from experience) for every question that she asked me. I even remembered to warn her that 15 different people were going to ask her her name, date of birth, what she was having done today, and who was doing it. I use the word WARN because I can remember coming in for a previous surgery and feeling uncomfortable that everyone kept asking me. I went down the Rabbit hole of if you don’t know my name by now, are you gonna do the right surgery when I’m unconscious? I was scared and had so many questions. I felt like I calmed and prepared her.

The first nurse that came in the room was incredible. My ego is a little inflated because I had already told Thing Two almost everything that she was covering. (We even had the eye to eye conversation of “I’ve got this!”) Once Leslie, the nurse was done going over the first round of information though it dawned on me that I didn’t know what to expect from this side of the bed. When you are having surgery, from the time that they put you to sleep to the time you wake up feels like 10 minutes. I honestly had no Idea that it could span several hours. I also didn’t know where I was supposed to go, if I could/ or should leave, how the doctor would find me etc.

Another nurse gave me a patient number and explained that I could monitor her status throughout the entire procedure via a television screen in the waiting room. She told me that the first 30 minutes in the OR would be a review, making sure everyone was on the same page and knew what was expected of them during this particular surgery. The surgery could take between 2 to 4 hours and recovery was usually 1-3 hours.

Everything went well

It’s after 8 pm here, and my day started at 7. I’m exhausted mentally and physically. I have my last day of Physical Therapy tomorrow, followed immediately by an appointment to be fitted for an AFO for my right foot. After that I am headed to stay with Thing Two for a couple hours to make sure she eats, pain meds etc. Maybe I curl up in her bed with her like she did mine when she was a little one?