May 27

 

 

I was on narcotics when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray...

As you can probably see, I have quite a black eye and giant knot on forehead going. It is non-surgery related. To summarize what happened, I will say this: I am too clumsy to even deserve feet. Anyone who has ever had a black eye before want to tell me how long this is going to last? Because not for anything, but it's sort of ugly, so I can't leave the house (not that I've left the house this week since Tuesday) without sunglasses. This happened about a week ago, and despite how it looks, it's definitely better since the day after it happened, I couldn't even open my eye. At least I can see now.

When I got to the hospital, people were very much like "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOU!???" and I kept answering "ISN'T A HOSPITAL THE ONLY PLACE NO ONE SHOULD JUDGE ME FOR HAVING A BLACK EYE?!?!!" Guess not.

The procedure (okay, it totally WAS surgery, because they told me it would take an HOUR and it took closer to three, which flipped my family out. If it is three hours long and I am naked on a table with tubes and IVs and EKG leads and a catheter for my pee coming out of me, it's an OPERATION) meant that I had to get wheeled way the hell through the hospital by some poor sweating male nurse into the ice cold Radiology Suite. About 15 people flocked around me, asking questions and telling me stuff and when the doctor finally arrived--he DIDN'T RECOGNIZE ME BECAUSE OF MY EYES. That was reassuring. They somehow manage to slide my girth from the bed onto the table, more stuff happens, I participate in a research study (even when faced with going under the knife, I am pro-research) which was WAY MORE ANNOYING than it should have been (let it suffice to say that having saline poured directly into your catheter tube is not a pleasant thing). They gave me about a million drugs and I sort of fell asleep.

Sort of, which was weird. Because if I really paid attention, I could hear what was going on around me. I could hear people talking, I could feel them guiding the needle up my groin (oh, and by the way, when I had the appointment, and he felt for the pulses in my groin, he most definitely pushed on MY LEG. Imagine how surprised I was when a nurse walked up to me with CLIPPERS and said "I have to shave you". Perhaps now you know more about my grooming habits than you'd wanted, sorry.) I could hear the phone ringing (when you tell my mother that something is going to take ONE HOUR and then it takes THREE, you'd better believe that my mom is going to be on your ass about it) I kept waiting for the phone to ring and for someone to come over to me and say "dana..it's your boss..he needs to know where the figures are.." But that never happened.

(note: the drugs just kicked in. beware)

After the 3 hours passed, someone (the person who'd asked me to participate in the research study) spent one full half hour pressing on my groin to stop the bleeding from the puncture site, I was hooked to the morphine pump, and then I was sent off to my room. I was sort of afraid that I'd end up in a room with someone who had 15 noisy family members who all brought in food and baloons (note: mylar baloons are forbidden from Yale-New Haven Hospital, which is where I was. In case I didn't mention it before) and listened to Jerry Springer at top volume and who wanted to talk with me. Happily, I ended up in a really cute room, with an almost direct view of Connecticut Mental Health Clinic, which I didn't really get up to look at until the next morning because I was SO stoned and SO sleepy, I could barely put together sentences. (For example: Doug called me to see how I was doing at about 8:30 tuesday night. We chatted for a while. I thought I was doing pretty well, then, I apparently said, totally out of nowhere: "Some people call me the space cowboy." Ha!)

I spent the night being awakened by the nurse's aide to take my vitals (at 12:30 am she came in and I sort of bellowed "DID YALE MAKE SOME KIND OF DEAL WITH SOMEONE TO NEVER LET ME SLEEP?!!?!"). At 3:30, my IV pole started beeping at me. I figured that someone woudl hear it and come in to fix it. After an hour of letting it beep, I finally rememebred that I had a nurse call button and she came in to fix it. Right after the nurse, the aide ran in and said "SINCE YOU'RE AWAKE! Im going to check your vitals!" which she did.

At 6 am, the lab flunky came in to finish the study (which was, in case you're curious [and i'm too befuddled to read up in the entry to see whether or not I've already mentioned what it was] him pouring saline into my cath tube to measure how long it took before I felt like I had to pee a little and then how long it took for me to need to pee A LOT)he pulled out the cath, made chit chat with me, the doctor came in handed me a bunch of perscroiptions and told me that overall, I'd used LESS morphine than most people did. I Just Said No.

Now I'm home. I'm in pain. My eye looks like shit. I'm bleeding like crazy and my dogs are driving me crazy.

 

How's your week?

Note: I didn't even bother to spell check this. sorry.

 

 

 

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