Yesterday was pretty nerve-racking. I've had surgery before to repair my broken nose - a few times - so I wasn't uncomfortable with the idea of being knocked out. And I also was very comfortable with the surgeon after meeting with him a few times. But this was the first time I had been knocked out since having my boys. There's some sort of immortal feeling you have prior to starting a family. It's that you feel like you can't be injured. You are more willing to take certain risks. And whether people recognize it, there is always a risk with a surgical procedure. I recall starting to drift off when they were fixing my nose, thinking "please let this be the last time I have to do this, and I hope it goes great". This time around, all I could think about was the possibility of not waking up!! AHHH!! As if that's what you want to be thinking about when you're going in for an elective procedure. And how selfish would that be to have a cosmetic procedure done that then caused you to be missing from your children's lives?? I would love to take a peak at what my blood pressures were running as I was laying on that operating room table. They must have been through the roof. Tears rolling down my face, sniffling under the oxygen mask. At first I think the nurse thought I was so upset because of the IV. Legitimate thought since there are a lot of people who have trouble with needles. I don't think they could have knocked me out fast enough once I told them what was running around in my head. And the next thing I knew I was waking up. No dreams in between. You aren't really sleeping. It's as if time stands still for a moment - one second you're finally drifting off on the table and the next moment you're groggily opening your eyes in the recovery room. What do they call that, suspended animation? Weird. And wouldn't I love to be an observer in those recovery rooms. I certainly have never been one to withold information. In fact I'm pretty much an open book about anything. But I don't know if the recovery room nurse needed to know that. And I'm sure there are a lot more discreet/reserved people who find themselves waking up in those rooms just rambling on about all kinds of intimate details of their lives - embarassed later. I told a friend, who is finishing up her bachelor's in nursing, that she should go into that realm and then maybe I could listen to some hilarious stories. :)
So would I do it again? Well, the recovery has been as easy as I could hope for. I did not need the heavy pain killers that I snagged at the pharmacy. Tylenol and some advil didn't completely take care of the pain, but they took the edge off. I have a few more days of that regimen before the majority of the swelling will go down. I won't be able to run for a couple weeks, which is hard to do without since it had finally become such a great routine, but worth it. As for appearance, I honestly couldn't tell you what this artificial body part looks like. It's still taped until lunch time today, and even then I don't know if it will show it's true form amongst the swelling. In a few days I plan on taking a couple pictures of it, and for most people you will get to see a picture of my profile for the first time - which I have carefully hidden or burned any evidence of up until now. It is a little strange to think about a strip of silicone sitting in my face, but I'm sure I will get used to it. And I've become okay with the fact that I have altered something about my appearance that I didn't like. As my sister told me, people come to her salon all the time to alter their appearance so she really doesn't look at this as being any different - just a little more permanent.
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ReplyDeleteOn another note, after my wrist surgery (several months later, actually) I ran into a client who is also an OR nurse. She allowed that we had had a nice little chat, which I remember NONE of!!! Hope I didn't spill any family secrets. If so, she has never told me what they were.......