The Road to Recovery

Thursday, March 19th, 2009 | General

If I had a nickle for every day I have to spend on the couch…

I’d have about $2

Well yesterday was pretty eventful. I got a call at 7:20 a.m. rescheduling my surgery time an hour earlier which made it noon. Jaime went to work for a few hours, then came home and helped me shower and dress. We drove to Zion (coolest hospital name ever) where I crutched my way to the pre-op waiting room. Right away they got me to a bed where I changed into one of those backless hospital gounds. I went to the restroom and then hung out with Jaime for about an hour while nurses came over to ask me a few questions and hook up an IV and heart monitoring device.

After another twenty minutes the surgeon and anaesthesiologist came over to introduce themselves and the described the procedures we would be going through. They were going to put a metal plate holding my fibula together with about 7 screws and then two screws on my tibia to hold my ankle in place (they ended up not needing the tibia screws). After they answered all my questions they left and Jaime and I waited for another half an hour. Then it was show time.

I asked the surgeon if I could get some pictures of the surgery and he said he would get the RN to take some with my iPhone. I gave Jaime a kiss good bye and they wheeled me to the OR. There were about 6 people inside all smiling and introducing themselves. Everything started to go faster for me. There was a lot of movement and talking as I got situated on the operating table. They put my arms out on their own tables and started feeding me oxigen. A few moments later they said “Erik, you’re going to fall asleep now and we’ll talk to you after”. Sure enough, 10 seconds later I was out cold.

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I remember waking up with a lot of pain in my leg. I told the nurse and she began giving me pain medication. It took a lot of medication to numb the pain, at which point they told me they would be monitoring my breathing. Apparently when you’re given a lot of this pain medication, you get tired and forget to breath on your own. Sure enough I felt like I was falling asleep and then would hear some loud beeps which reminded me to breath. This continued for about an hour. I began feeling normal again and they lady said she would take me to see Jaime as soon as she had a moment. It took her 50 minutes until she asked another person to wheel me down the hall.

I met up with Jaime and got my own clothes back on. We got my exiting paper work and picked up some meds on our way out. We watched a movie last night and headed to bed, where I fought pain for most of the night. I got about 4 hours of sleep. I just couldn’t get comfortable and the medication didn’t seem to do anything. I’m hoping tonight will be better.

MadClouds

These clouds hold a grudge…