Etherized Upon the Table

Surgery is a wild experience.

My first one was in October, when I fractured my tib-fib and had a plate with 5 screws installed. This felt like child's play at the time. For as badly as the break hurt (and, because of pre-surgery fasting, I had taken no pain killer from the moment I woke up on surgery day until 4 PM when pre-op started), there was nothing scary about the procedure, nothing but a fixed ankle awaiting me on the other end of it. So I kind of enjoyed the whole experience in the sense that it was so trouble-free and yet so interesting.

And I did learn something about myself that came in handy for my next surgery: that morphine is a bit over-rated. The night after ankle surgery, I got a shot of it every 2 hours. After 2 doses, in the middle of the night, I told the nurse, "You know. This isn't doing anything for the pain. It just makes 3/4's of my body not care that the other 1/4 really hurts. Why don't we skip it?"

He said, "You can be brave in the morning," and then shot me up with more morphine. And 3/4 of me was then warm and fuzzy and not-caring that the nurse had just ignored me.

Altogether, this last surgery was a lot different.

But it was still pretty wild. Like something out of a fairy tale, what with the deep sleeps and stuff happening without your knowing it. There is no dreaming when under. You're just in one place--in this case, an Army hospital pre-op bed sectioned off by a curtain on tracks--and then you're in another place. But by the time you are someplace else, your awareness has nothing to do with your surroundings.

Instead, hearing comes first. But you hear things without any cognition of the context they should fit into. And your brain is several seconds behind making the things you hear make sense. By then, you are hearing something else. I'm telling you: wild.

Here's my record of what I recall amidst the fog:

I was in the pre-op room with the little curtain. Bryan was there, and then Helen, our friend from KC who came to wait with Bryan during the surgery. She has a giant service dog named BroJean. The four of us waited and I was an absolute mess. Not wanting to go through with it but knowing I'd go through with it.

The anesthetist came into my little curtained room and introduced herself, explained what a good job she'd do keeping me under, telling me that Mayfield was her "favorite person in the whole hospital" and that he'd already talked with her about the coming surgery. And, she reported, he had gotten choked up about it.

I don't remember anything after hearing that. Surely other stuff happened. Stuff like, 'Now, Amy, I'm giving you this drug now to make you sleepy." I should ask Bryan and Helen to fill in the time for me. . .

Then, the next moment, which was several hours later, I said, "Why does my ankle hurt?!"

Then other voices, "Ankle????"

Yes. When I make the mistake of sitting cross-legged on a hard floor with my left leg on the bottom, the plate sets my bone on fire. At that moment, having just had a breast and whole set of lymph nodes cut off, my ankle was the only thing I felt. It was like I'd sat on it in that cross-legged position for an hour.

Then I heard Mayfield on my left side ask, "How are you feeling, Amy?"

And I rolled my head to that side, realized I had this plastic mask on my face and thought, 'Why is there a mask on my face?' and said, "Unhhh."

He said, "I got the licence plate of the truck that hit you."

Then I was being wheeled out. I opened my eyes for the first time and saw Bryan, David and Helen and a dog. A dog in a hospital? Oh. Right. That's BroJean.

Then I was in a room where Bryan was permitted and Mayfield said something about morphine on tap. I waved my hand at Bryan and said, "Tell him about the morphine!"

Folks, does it ever happen that a spouse gets the story right when telling it for the other? I was powerless! So fogged up in the head. Had this oxygen mask on that prevented me from speaking well even if I could have managed some words. I was thinking, "Oh please get this right, Bryan. Please know what I'm talking about!"

And he did. He dispensed with the comic timing, of course, and that crazy nurse's little slogan about bravery. But he made the point: Morphine didn't really do the trick for Amy last time.

I heard Mayfield say to hook up something else. And then at some point soon after, I was given a magic button! Just press this and you will feel better. See? Like a fairy tale.

Things cleared up bit by bit. The context was pretty well filled in, and my eyes were open. I was very concerned about being in the ICU, and knowing only that something had gone wrong with the port installation. But right at the moment when I was about to freak out about it, and I was asking Bryan what exactly had happened, Mayfield came back in and I had the awareness for him to explain it. Ended up being no big deal at all, as we know.

Later--days later--I asked whether I'd been turned onto my left side at some point to expose the right side better. This would have explained why my ankle hurt so much. Mayfield just shook his head and kind of laughed. Nope. On my back the whole time. "But that's the first thing you said. We were all like, 'Did she just say ankle?'

Chalk it up to the mysteries of ether.