The surgery was a huge success. It's amazing that, even though my innards were chopped up I have less pain now than before surgery. My doctor said that the tumors were sitting like a bowling ball on top of all my other organs and that's why I was in so much pain. And all along I thought I just had an ulcer.
My anesthesiologist did a great job (and was a smoker, and told me that he would have snuck me out for a smoke break if the doctor hadn't shown up). He gave me something he called "medicinal bourbon" to relax me. I don't know what the fuck it was, but I literally felt it hit my vein. He said it normally takes a few minutes to kick in, but right as it went into my arm everything in the room got crazy. I vaguely remember saying "Did anyone else notice that everything in the room just turned purple?" Then I don't remember anything. My mom said that I was carrying on as if I had been on a drinking bender for hours. I'm glad I don't remember what I said.
When I came to in the recovery room, I was still pretty jacked up. The nurses said I kept laughing uncontrollably. Surprisingly I didn't vomit once. The key is to take Dramamine before surgery if you are allergic to anesthetic. Wish someone had told me that 10 years ago. I'm normally vomiting my brains out in recovery. This very sweet orderly took me to my room. I remember telling him "look, you've had a lot to drink, maybe you should let me drive". He told my mom that I was the first patient he's ever wheeled up to a room that was like a happy drunk.
I stayed at Rose Medical Center. Say what you will about the annoyances of HIPAA, one good thing is hospitals can no longer crowd patients into a room. I had my own room, a huge contrast from my last hospital stay when they packed 3 other patients in a room the same size as the one I stayed in at Rose.
The nurses were bored because there weren't many patients on the floor. They kept bringing me stuff to eat, even though I wasn't hungry. They would show up with ice cream and then say "oh, you can't eat this can you" and then they would eat the ice cream while sitting on the edge of my bed. After re hydrating I started feeling more human and was able to show the nurses how to do a little hack on their computer system to make it easier to enter patient information. I learned how to use all the computers in my room so I could get out of bed to pee or wander the halls without setting off any alarms.
After getting knocked out for surgery your lungs get lazy. One thing I had to do was breathe into this machine to register how strong my lungs were working. My lungs were kind of shit (this is also supposed to keep you from getting bronchitis, but I got sick anyway because my mom got it, supposedly because she was with me in the hospital).
I had asked the nurses what I had to do to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible. I met all of the tasks they gave me by Thursday night, but they wanted me to stay so I did. At 3 in the morning me, two nurses, and a nurse intern had a contest with the breathing machine. I won for the strongest lungs, which surprised them because I smoke(d). Then they said I kind of cheated because I didn't tell them that I also run.
One of the nurses, Kathy, came in to see me every hour. I always woke up when she came into my room and she would tell me stories about her family. She also would bring me popsicles and as much coke as I could drink even though I was supposed to be drinking water. She kept telling me to order a sandwich from room service (yeah, hospital with room service) but I really couldn't eat anything. And she took me off the "standard diet" delivery so I could order what ever I wanted for breakfast and dinner.
When I left the hospital they didn't even make me ride down to the car in a wheel chair.
If you're ever in Denver and need surgery, I highly recommend Rose Medical Center. It was seriously the BEST hospital I have ever been in.
My friend Joe "Brassy" Josephson was driving to the outdoor retail show the night I had surgery, but he wanted to know how I was. I sent him this picture giving him the finger (hee). For the record, because I've had frostbite in a lot of fingers, my middle finger was the only one they could get a reading from.
