A few weeks ago, I had my gallbladder removed. Yay me!! I am amazed by the medical advancements that allowed my surgeon to pull the sucker out using only three teensy weensy holes scattered sporadically across my tummy, and one longer incision inside the cave leading to my belly button. (A cave leading to my belly button, you ask? Why yes. I'm pleasantly plump. Think of a nine month old, well-fed baby with a big round belly. That's what my belly looks like. My belly button is in the center of what essentially looks like a cave. And, fortunately for me, my surgeon was able to go to the underside of the upper part of my cave, and slice open a two inch slit through which he somehow managed to slide out my nasty, no-longer-functioning, chronically inflamed, scar-tissue infested gallbladder.) So when I look down at my cave of my belly button, I can't see the scar. Pretty darned nifty if you ask me. The surgery was an instant success. And other than the sharp searing pain which felt like I'd been stabbed four times (which my surgeon assures me is exactly what happened), the instant I woke up from surgery, I felt better than I had in years.
Not only was my amazing and incredible and fabulous surgeon able to remove my gallbladder, I got a two-fer. Whilst he was in the general area of my belly button cave, he fixed a hernia that I hadn't even known I had. He noticed it on the CT scan during my pre-op visit, and remarked that he'd be happy to fix it while he was hanging out inside my belly button cave. Later on he confessed that he would have to fix the hernia because it was going to be in his way when he was tugging out my gallbladder, but it was nice to think that he was doing me such a great favor.
The day of the surgery deemed to be a rather uneventful experience. Except for the fact that evidently I have difficult, teeny, tiny (read nonexistent) veins. I assured all who attempted that I had a perfectly wonderful vein that would give them whatever they wanted in the crook of my arm if they just put a tourniquet around my arm and waited. But alas, they are the experts, and they decided to go hunting elsewhere. After an hour (an hour!) of stabbing, probing, prodding and blowing out four (four!) stab sites in an attempt to insert an IV, they hauled in the vascular expert. He stared at my arm, my elbow, and my hand for eons. His overly obsessive examination of my arm started to give me the creeps. Then, he turned off the lights. This didn't help me with the whole feeling creeped out business. He rubbed some weird red light up and down against my arm, elbow, and hand for what seemed like forever, and then after trying (and failing) to insert an IV in an already blown vein in my hand, he quit. I out-trumped the expert!! Ha! The anesthesiologist wasn't amused to be called back in to my cubby in order to insert an IV, but it only took him one stab and he'd inserted a 20 gauge something-or-other in the middle of the underside of my arm, and the ultrasound tech who'd ran all the way up to my cubby from the bowels of the hospital seemed a bit put off when he wasn't needed. I felt bad for the poor ultrasound guy, having run all this way for nothing. So the anesthesiologist ran the ultrasound machine on the inside of my elbow, just for kicks. What do you know, a very large, very pretty vein, *right where I had told them it lived,* pulsed beautifully in blue across the ultrasound screen. I didn't do a very good job of hiding my "I told you so" smirk.
Needless to say, after an hour of probing and prodding and finally having the IV inserted, and after getting every one's attention in the entire pre-op waiting room for having out-matched the nurse, the other nurse who specialized in spectacularly difficult IV insertions, and the vascular specialist (I felt like such a celebrity!), they injected my IV with several wonderful medications that instantly made me feel loopy and delightful. I put my hair in a pony à la Mulan, donned my hairnet, and off to the operating room we went.
The whole gang was prepped and ready (and had been for quite some time), so while the anesthesiologist nurse finished getting me ready to slip into a blissful state of unconsciousness, I looked around and introduced myself to the awaiting doctors and nurses. My surgeon I knew, of course. He was busy reviewing my chart and talking into the surgical recording device. The rest of the folks were just masked, scrub-covered people. Complete strangers. I turned my head, and the nearest doctor introduced herself and told me that she would be assisting my surgeon. I asked her if she was going to be the doctor who sewed up my puncture sites from the laparoscopic procedure. She said that if my surgeon thought that was appropriate, she would. So I asked her if she would be so kind as to alter the stitches in such a way as to write, 'Dyslexic Zorro was here." Now, to be fair, most of her face was covered in either a hair beanie, some dark framed glasses, or a face mask, but I could swear that she looked confused. Could have been the knitted eyebrows. Who knows. Or maybe the drugs had started to kick in. But it seemed to me a fair question to ask. After all, I have a Dyslexic Zorro scar on my foot. It only seems fitting to have a matching scar on my big fat belly.
So, I explained to Doctor Confusion that I have had two surgeries on my foot. I've only broken the sucker on two separate occasions, but the first time I broke it in four places (one in the ankle, three in the foot), and the second time I broke it I broke it in two different places. The first surgery left a single slash across my foot. The second surgery I also had a two-fer. My foot surgeon sliced open my foot on one side to fix things up and remove a small bone fragment that was floating around. Then, after stitching me up, he sliced open another section, removed another piece of bone that hadn't wanted to reattach, and then reattached a tendon that had gone all wonky. The result left me with a FABULOUS scar, exactly in the shape of a backwards letter Z. Dyslexic Zorro.
So back to Doctor Confusion. I explained to her about my Dyslexic Zorro scar on my foot, and explained to her that I wanted her to stitch in "Dyslexic Zorro was here" on my belly. And if she couldn't manage that, I asked her to please, at least, to sew in my initials or something. She laughed and assured me that she would see what she could do.
Imagine my disappointment when I awoke, looked down, and found three, pathetically boring, teensy weensy scars. No "Dyslexic Zorro was here." No initials. Sigh. Such a completely unhelpful surgical staff. I mean really, I can't even connect the dots into anything interesting! What fun is there in that?!?
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