Am I Nervous?

 

I MAY HAVE HAD AN 8:15 AM APPOINTMENT, but that doesn’t mean I was ready to go at 8:15. It was a good thing that Dawn was driving. I was in no mood for having to deal with this whole surgery thing.

We were on time, checked in, and led back into one of those little curtained off areas where I was handed a hospital gown. I did not expect that. The Nurse, Techie, or Head Patient Wrangler told me that they were going to hook me up to a heart monitor and put a port into a vein – just in case.

Whatever. I was resigned to my fate.

I have been dealing with doctors and hospitals all my life and I don’t like them and, honestly, I don’t trust them. Yet there I was.

A different Nurse took my blood pressure and asked me, “Are you nervous?”

“Of course I’m nervous. I’m in here to allow a young man I’ve met twice to start jacking around with my eyeballs. Yes, I’m nervous.”

On top of that I wasn’t able to take my morning BP Meds. No food, no water, no coffee, no nothing for four hours before Happy Time. My BP must have been similar to that of a Gazelle being chased by a Leopard.

“You’ll be fine. We’ll give you a little something to calm your nerves.”

That turned out to be two squirts of something under my tongue. That had all of the calming power of tap water. A fish taco would have been more effective.

A few minutes later my doctor – Doogie Howser with a five o’clock shadow came by to reassure me that everything was going to be fine. He had another young doctor in tow who was going to “Observe.” He looked like he should have had his mother sign a field trip release for him to be there. I began to wonder if this was all a Junior Achievement Project and that they might be getting extra credit if they could finish with me before recess.

I can’t tell you much about the cataract surgery itself. I was there, but all I saw was a bright light in my left eye and what looked like a paper towel draped over my right eye.

Someone eyedropped the heck out of my left eye. There was no pain, just the doctor telling me everything he was doing and what looked like the high beams of an approaching Peterbilt Big-Rig truck.

Wham, Bam, Thank You Krafty and I was back in my curtained cubicle. Elapsed time in the OR – maybe fifteen minutes. My BP was returning to Humanlike numbers. The Gazelle had escaped the Leopard.

Dawn and I had arrived at the hospital at 8:15 and we pulled out of the parking lot and headed home just a few minutes past 11 AM. It would have been sooner, but I had to go to the bathroom. I hadn’t had so much as a sip of water in a good ten hours yet I managed to vent enough liquid to trigger flash flood warnings downstream from Terre Haute (That’s French for “Move the cows to high ground.”)

It is now “One eye down and one eye to go.” That will be in about two weeks. In the meanwhile I am wearing a little plastic shield over my left eye – sort of a low budget Phantom of the Opera look.

Dawn drove us home and to the doctor’s office the next day for a quick Post-Op checkup. Dr. Doogie seemed pleased with everything (Maybe he got a Gold Star on his classroom report.). His only admonition was that if I began to experience pain, bleeding, and assorted other uh-oh things I was supposed to call him at once. Being the worry wart that I am I asked him, “What about smoke?”

“Yes! If your eyeball bursts into flames call me.”

I’m just trying to cover all bases.

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