…. continued
Tuesday 15 April
On the way to the operating theatre (OT), we met my mom. I told her where my room was and why I was only just being wheeled away. She then went to my room to wait. Phillip accompanied me as far as he could and went off.
I was transferred to another gurney and wheeled off to the OT. Or what I thought was the OT. After looking at the ceiling rolling up in front of my eyes, I was treated to a still picture of the ceiling and some lights. We did not move for a while. I raised my head and looked around. I was in some sort of a queue. There was an old lady in her gurney in front of mine. It was like there was some sort of OT waiting room.
There, I attempted to wear the surgical cap issued to me. Note, operative word is “attempted”. How difficult could it be? Apparently, my hair did not get the memo and refused to stay in the cap. I think a nurse managed to stuff it in.
In a while, we moved on the OT (threatre 3B, if I remember correctly). From then, it was just the OT staff and I. Everyone seemed to be in a slight fluster. I supposed some emergency happened that pushed my morning surgery to the afternoon. Eh, whatever. I am here.
My identity was checked before I was wheeled out of my room, double-checked upon entry to the operating theatre waiting room and triple checked at the theatre itself. With a double major surgery scheduled, I am very certain the medical team would want to have the correct patient under the knives.
The anesthetist got busy. I said “Before you knock me out, thank you for your hard work.” I think they were surprised. A gas mask thingey was placed over my mouth and nose. I got very sleepy very quickly and managed to kinda wave and said “Bye bye” before going to Lala Land.
I woke up in pain. A lot of pain. Did I mention I was in pain? I think I was in the recovery room. I could hear others around me. A moan or two occasionally from someone somewhere nearby.
I remember groaning a bit. It reminded me of the days when I was curled up in bed with cramps. Unpleasant.
Each time I managed to get out of Lala Land, I was dragged back. Not a bad thing, really.
I remember someone asking me how did I feel. I am ashamed to say “Pain. Very painful.” Actually, I mumbled that.
Later on when the pain was still horrible and I was a little more conscious, I vaguely recall someone saying “morphine pump”. I cannot remember whether is was at this stage I was first given the morphine pump and told to use it but I sure was damn glad they gave it to me.
Surgery took about two and a half hours. Recovery time (or the time it took to get me to a state of the semi-living and the less groaning ) took about 3 hours.
My friend, Amanda, saw (probably from afar) them wheeling me back to my room (at about 8pm-ish) and announced it to the peeps who were waiting in my room. Everyone came out to form a welcoming party. They were asked to wait outside while I was transferred back to my bed. I was told it was about twenty minutes from the time they brought me back to the room until the welcoming party was allowed in the room.
During the transition from gurney to bed, I was told that I gave a long groan. Did I mention I was in pain? That part about groaning I remember. I started to gain more consciousness.
A disembodied voice said “Here is the morphine pump. Just press this button. It will only activate once every X minutes to prevent you from getting too much too soon.”
Then I heard Jason’s voice “Hi Lynne, we here to visit you.”
I opened my eyes (somehow got my glasses back on) and saw EVERYBODY in the room. Heck, there were Phillip, Mom, Linus, Jason, Lewin, Fiona, Clare, Amanda and Arti. That was nearly enough to knock me out again. Wow! I was touched.
Phillip bought me a huge stuffed Totoro.
Here is a picture of me giving the thumb’s up (without releasing the morphine pump for obvious reasons) and Totoro just next to me. I looked so bad after surgery (pastey face, panda eyes, dishevelled hair..oh crap) that the picture has been cropped.
Lewin started to joke about the oxygen measuring device clipped to my right middle finger. He was making me laugh!!!! No! No! No! Cannot!! Bad boy!!! Ahhhh!
I raised my right hand and kinda gave him the finger. With the device clipped on, it was not too bad. *whistle*
I kept pressing little black button. Hey, it hurts, okay? Someone who shall remain nameless kept saying “Stop that. You’ll become an addict.” The next sentence describing my thoughts at that time has been censored to keep this entry within the PG rating.
At about 10pm-ish when Mom said “Okay, we are going.”
Night, mom.
It was somehow a fitful first night – the nurses kept coming in to check on me. Temperature and BP and the morphine pump counter to see how many times I pressed it.
Sometime during the night, I woke up in pain. Not from my stitches but from behind my left shoulder blade and my left side just below the armpit. It HURT! Damn. Now what? I started to massage myself and managed to fall asleep.
Throughout the night as I kept waking up from the second source of pain (and not the original source), I wondered how was I going to get rid of that pain. And why would I have it?
I found out the answers the next day.
Stay tuned. 
I’m a lot less stressed than when I was a week or so go. Thank you all for sending the happy thoughts! I have three very overdue assignments to do and I look forward to letting you guys know that I have completed them.
