Holy Crap, Titanium Girl is Back!

Can you believe it's been nearly two months since I've posted here??? I'd tell you about them, but truth is, I don't remember a whole lot.

Nah, just kidding. Well, partly. See, back in late May, I took a header in the driveway and broke my freakin' wrist. My right wrist. Broke AND dislocated it. I spent hours in the ER, hours in the surgeon's office, and hours and hours with my arm propped up and buried in ice in an effort to get the swelling down enough so I could have surgery. ("Don't worry," the surgeon said. "If it's not down by Friday, we can do the surgery next Tuesday." TUESDAY??? Hellooo, it's Wednesday now. Wait a whole week with my bones zigzagged???)

Have you noticed that the older we get, the younger doctors get? Surgeon Boy is cute as a bug, smart, very good at what he does . . . and maybe twelve. The pre-op nurses are young enough to be my kids. And there I am Friday evening, waitng in bed with Robert -- I'm in bed, not him -- and this guy who looks like he came straight from Animal House comes strolling in. "Hey, are you Rachel?" he asks. "I've been looking all over for you. I'm Dr. Anesthesia." (Uh, Doc, I'm the ONLY one in pre-op! How could you miss me?) (At least he knew my name. He didn't come in and ask me, with my hugely-splinted right are, "Are you my wrist?")

He's cute, too, maybe sixteen, looks like he lives in the state of Dazed and Confused, but happy to go along. (He's also very good. I have only the best.)

Surgeon Boy is delayed, but I finally get into the OR 90 minutes late. I've never been in one alert and conscious. My one impression is that it is freaking COLD. We're talking, like, 50 degrees. No shit, when the nurse takes me back, the staff around the desk are wearing coats over their scrubs. Not jackets or sweaters -- winter coats. In the time it takes to push me fifty feet down the hall and into the room, I'm turning blue (and that shade of blue is SOOO not my color).

Then they plug in my Bair Paws.

Oh. My. God.

I noticed back in pre-op that the gown they gave me was pretty substantial for a disposable gown. It had a bear paw print on it, along with the name, and there was a liner that went from neck to knee, with slits cut in the outside of the gown. I didn't really give it much thought, though. Until, in the OR, the nurse says, "We're going to get you warmed up." And she plugs a hose into my gown.

The outside layer of the gown immediately puffs up from neck to knee because this hose is blowing hot air into the gown. Like 90 degree air. Wonderfully warm, cozy, hey-I'm-not-going-to-freeze-to-death-after-all air. Whoa . . .

In the PACU (post-anesthesia care unit, formerly called "recovery" -- we do love acronyms, don't we?), the nurse asks if there's anything I needed when I leave. Yes, I say. I WANT a Bair Paws. Not just the gown -- the whole system.

He doesn't give it to me. Really unfair, considering that he insisted on waking me up from the only painfree moments I'd had in four days (or would have in the next - so far - seven weeks). (And he woke me so I could go home and go to sleep. REALLY unfair.)

Speaking of pain . . . that's the reason I don't remember a significant chunk of the last few months, at least not in detail. Broken bones hurt like a sonuvabitch. So do dislocated bones, especially dislocated bones with a plate screwed into them. Oh, and the three-inch incision on the inside of my arm is no fun, either. Toss in one cute little soft-spoken hand therapist who's really Joseph Mengele in a clever disguise, and you get the idea: this ain't been no fun.

But I will survive.

I'm too stubborn not to. Rachel6:32 PM