The Emerald Rose

      Well, I am out on the other side and in recovery and “healing”. They started out last  Monday morning sending this huge, “gentlemen of darker persuasion”, all dressed in surgical scrubs and armed with a brand new electric razor at 4:30 a.m. Our only conversation was ME: “Good Morning!” HIM: “I’m gonna shave you” ,(enough said, men are humble yet modest.) Half an hour later EVERY single hair south of my chin was off my body in fuzzy little piles all over the bed, and I NEVER considered myself a “hairy” guy!! He threw one of those nasty little non- Armani hospital gowns to me and say “”Put it on and climb on the gurney outside, we’re going to “pre-op” (Mental note, aside from my own mother, my wife, and the various daydreams of other women (hopefully) has anyone been as “intimate” with my poor body and said nothing of any significance.

        Ten minutes later I’m lying on this gurney in “Pre-Op” a those folks are just coming to work and stowing thier snacks and fruit and gatorade in the Pre-op refrigerator across fron where I’m stashed. One nice elderly lady in surgical scrubs comes in and tells me she’ll be gettting me ready for the operation, putting in arterial IV’s, regular IV’s and an “A” line IV in my jugular vein in the neck. Courage is gone, despair has arrived and resignation and whimpering begin. “I thought I was going to be unconciossious for all this stuff?” I heard a little voice come out of my mouth.  “Oh yes,  you will be, we just have to make sure you are the right guy we’re operating on, doing the right surgery to you, and that all the permissions and understandings are complete before we send you to “la-la land” and go to work. Ten signatures later, and twenty some odd questions later “Elvis left the building.”, at 7:04 a.m.

           Next recollection of awareness was an 800 pound gorilla sitting on my damn chest making it almost impossible to breath. (First conscious thought: “Man am I glad I quit smoking four years ago, at least some air is getting in.”) The next eight or ten hours were in and out of awake, somebody standing over me taking readings from machines etc. looking at these three “garden hoses” to see what was flowing through them, you know life up the hose watch the fluid flow and put it down, go write some cryptic stuff on this little white board (which I deciphered all by my self  “4/13 – 4pm – current volume 430 cc’s of fluid accumulated” No pain, but soreness beginning to be felt, still in and out of the “plan of the day”.

        Guess a night went by an I was a little more congnizant by now, it was tuesday morning less than 24 hours since surgery. By noon a flurry of activity began, “Hi, I’m Dr. Nelson’s nurse, you ready to move out of Critical care and back to a room?” This croaky voice from somewhere says , “Let’s go!” “OK, we’re gonna pull out a few more tubes, pipes and other stuff and get you out of here. ”

          She lifted up these three, not one, not two, but THREE clear garden hose size tubes and I notice they are coming out of MY CHEST! (Nice nurse, but couldn’t count worth shit! “I’m going to count to three and we’ll pull these out first, ready, one, two,… and there we go, only a half a second more, and all three got yanked at the same time time. I’m sure there was only about six or eight inches inside of me, but DAMN they seemed to come out be the “foot” not the inch. Then she tightened up all the stitching and said “All done, away you go.” A team of “goons” show up and do the “roll, bounce, drag” thing and I’m flipped from one bed to another for the ride to my room. I think I checked out for a short nap because I don’t remember much of the trip to the room, but I’m now back in the room open my eyes and my wife is there smiling down at me.

          Well, gotta stop there for now, my oatmeal, fresh fruit, and toast is ready for today, we’ll pick up the story later. (I’m writing of day 2 on Day 9, the story will catch up and be cuurent real quickly.

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