It was Tuesday the 19th, the day before the biopsy, that Yolanda from the scheduling office called. I was at the salvation army thrift store, a little after 11, had just gotten off work. In 23 hours I'd be showing up to be gassed and carved.
The doctor had had a cancellation. Would I like the first slot for the day? I'd have to be there at 5:30 AM. Checked with my best friend, who is taking me ... agreed.
The thing about my best friend is, we used to be married. As in now divorced. And one of our countless incompatibilities is that she always liked to be early for things. So she picked me up at ten to five, and we were at the hospital at five after, in the waiting room at ten after, and then waited an hour before we got taken back.
By then I had gotten used to the routine. There had been four or five people who had seen me in my pre-op visit on Monday. My name. Date-Of-Birth. Could I describe what were they going to do to me in this procedure? I know it is all part of careful protocols skillfully designed to avoid mistakes, and most of all to prevent performing the wrong procedure on the wrong person. But it still grates.
You want to say, well if you folks don't know who I am and what I'm doing here, we're in bad shape. Which is, of course, the point. "They" have made it so bureaucratic, baroque and complicated that experience shows sometimes they do have no clue what they are doing to whom.
So I resisted the temptation to snark, and went through it another half dozen or more times before they knocked me out.
There were two or was it three residents working with my doctor. And the anesthesiologist, the anesthetist, the other anesthesiologist who offered the first a second opinion on whether the conditions that cause my sleep apnea might interfere with intubation, and of course a resident or two working with them. My main "awake" nurse, Bobby, and then the one who would be with me in the OR.
I can sum up waking up from the procedure with one word: pain. Pain in my throat. I could not speak. Could not swallow. Could breathe -- barely. Why they could not have medicated the area to reduce or eliminate the pain while I was still asleep I don't know.
I also don't know why they didn't warn me. I also don't know why with all those doctors and nurses around, none of them thought, Hey, since we're tearing out a piece of his throat, he's probably not going to be want to be swallowing very much AFTER the procedure, so let's give him his meds before he wakes up.
Eventually we (my ex and I) decided I was better off out of there. We ... exaggerated ... about my having urinated (one of the things the require to release you) and I went to her house, had a bunch of Ibuprofen, which at that point I could swallow, barely and stayed the night.
The next day my daughter drove me home -- a dividend from the dozens of hours I spent in cars with her when she was learning to drive.
It is now four days later. The pain is mostly gone. It's just bad first thing in the morning. Then I take Ibuprofen. Whether it goes down naturally as I get up and get my mouth hydrated or the ibuprofen really does help I am not sure.
Tomorrow -- tonight, really, as most people view these things-- I go back to work. I had thought to go talk to the human resources and benefits people. The biopsy confirmed I have a squamous cell carcinoma. But then at a breakfast for my daughter's birthday, who turned 19 yesterday, I was reminded tomorrow is memorial day.
It will have to wait until Tuesday.
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