Going in soon! and i am filled with fear of the operation. What is it gonna feel like? will i wake up? will i recover? will it be darn painful? will it be go okay? to these questions i was in total doubt, but one thing was for sure. This would be an experience. I resign myself to fate, and i trudge into the operating room
-Operating theatre-
One woman distracts me with details about my name, i/c number, drug allergies and medical condition, as another opens a case of equipment which will form part of my hand for the next 6 hours or so. A needle is inserted and removed, and in place of the sharp burning "ant bite" sprouted a menacing piece of blue-coloured tube which sticked out of my widest vein on the back of my left palm. With the deed done, i ask the doctor what it'll general anesthetic would feel like. I'm obviously daunted and she doesn't offer me any sympathies. What she does do however, is to increase my knowledge on what goes on during general anesthetic…A tube to pump oxygen into my body will be inserted into my nostril and into my body. I will feel sleepy and i will fall asleep. When i come to, i will be in the recovery room, a proud owner of a brand new bloody nose because of the tube in my nose, and will experience discomfort in my throat and nose which wil
l inexplicably lead to coughing and nausea. Also, because i am to be heavily sedated, i will feel extremely drowsy, and will be disorientated. NICE. Time to go in now. So i enter, and everything seems to move like clockwork in here. I remove my robe, and lie face up on the operating table. I am told to breathe in fully from a mask that is connected to a tube. She tells me i will go to sleep soon. And then i remember! Oh no! i forgot to tell my dad not to come to pick me after the operation!..Anyways…Hmm..this mask..It smells funny…weird..plasticky. It smells…almost lik....weir…..weir..err..smell..it….an…..……
-recovery room-
…and i awake…to the sound of a warm motherly voice, which is that of a middle-aged nurse who is at the foot of a contraction i am lying on. Or have i really awakened?…It's hard to tell, since i cannot feel my face, my arms, legs..or anything for that matter. There's a surreal feeling about me. But at least i was prepared. Drowsy i am, with an irritable and dry throat. I try to lift my hand to my nose to check for bleeding. but i cannot move my hand? ridiculous. I doubt i've ever felt so helpless. Where am i? oh yes..i must be in the recovery room. I
struggle to speak. But the only slurs of words that emerge from my hoarse dry lips are "owrididko"? As i struggle to speak, the nurse struggles to hear me. Luckily, she's adept in the local language of the
darnnitikannotmovemytonguecositstotallynumb tribe. She tells me the operation is over and is ok, and the doctor will be in shortly for a short check up, before i am to be transferred back downstairs to rest in the day ward. I plead for water, but my request is overthrown on fears that i may regurgitate it out. To ease my throat, the nurse opens a squirt-tube of saline and begins to squeeze it into my mouth. Interestingly, i don't feel a thing in my mouth, only some hint of comfort down my raspy throat. After so
me 10 minutes or so..(obviously surmised since i couldn't tell the difference between an instant and an eternity in that state)..a doctor comes in to ask me how i am..etc..interestingly she tells me that one supernumerary wasn't found during surgery. In the midst of searching for the shrewd supernumerary, there was damage done to my two front teeth
, and its roots were now exposed..NICE. I attempt to crack a lame joke about a discount on the price of surgery, since i extracted only 6 teeth and not 7, but unfortunately the doctor's knowledge of the language of the darnnitikannotmovemytonguecositstotallynumb tribe i
sn't quite as profound as that of the nurse. So i continue to rest…
…and after a prolonged period of time, i start to feel a throbbing pain in my he
ad. Ah…the effects of sedation must be wearing thin now. Funnily (but not a
t that moment), I still cannot really move my body, weak as it was, so what i did do could be summed as an attempted act of movement. As my head continues to be hit by an endless barrage by some hidden force, I start to writhe and wince..and the experienced nurse offers me some mercy in the form of painkillers. She crushes two panadols, and i sip them up through a straw…the only evidence that i finished the dosage being the empty container which held the load. The panadols don't do me any good initially, but
after what felt like an eternity(5 minutes), the pounding to my brains eased, and i was back at nirvana. I laid my head back onto the pillow, which is the natural thing to do since i was feeling extremely drowsy..and i heard voices discussing wh
at time to bring me back down..and i guess that when the time reached, i saw through my squinted eyes, two nurses pushing me through a hallway, and then a lift, and then i was back where it all began, at the day ward.
-Amazing amount of bone removed from my currently festering mouth-
