Okay, I’ll admit it. Underneath my James Bond demeanor the reality was a bit more Wally Cox, as I was less sanguine about this procedure than I let on. I’m not sure why - I’ve had this (and more) before and I could usually just whistle my way in the dark right past it. But perhaps like an old cat I feel as if I’ve used up most of my nine lives already, and this last year represented something like extra innings for me (and you know it must be bad if I’m using a sports metaphor). I didn’t even trot out any of my traditional black humor on the way to the hospital this morning.
Fun fact - one time while Shaw was driving me to the ER many years ago for a cardiac issue I spent most of the ride telling him who I didn’t want at my funeral.
For Valentines Day Shaw bought me a giant bag of Jelly Belly jellybeans, which he knows is my favorite form of snack. I’ve been working on it for the past several weeks and made sure to finish it before today as I’d be damned if I was going to leave any uneaten in case something went wrong.
Plus I didn’t want to give myself a kinnah hurrah (Yiddish for ‘evil eye’ or ‘kiss of death’).
So the day began quietly with us waking at 5:00AM and arriving at Jersey Shore Medical Center for my scheduled 6:45 appointment, where they called my name promptly at 7:30. Walking me back to the prep room I said my goodbyes to Shaw and was shown to one of several curtained-off gurneys. The first nurse told me to strip completely and put on a gown, open to the back. By this point I can dress myself in one of these getups in my sleep.
I must point out here that I was attended to by more nurses today than we were by servers that time at Restaurant Nicholas. Every time I looked up there was a new face. And each one was friendlier and more helpful than the one before. Say what you will about large medical conglomerates like Hackensack Meridian - but they sure know how to hire. And I’m not just saying that because of my husband.
After hooking me up to various monitors, tubes, IV’s and what-all, all the while asking me my name and date of birth, another nurse came over looking slightly sheepish and told me she had to shave my groin to insert the tubes for the procedure. So after making crop circles in what must look like one of the weirdest damn bikini waxes in history, we were good to go. Or so I naively thought.
The anesthesiologist came in to introduce himself and was as nice and comforting as the nurses. He asked me some questions, answered some of mine and said he’d be back. Then around 8:30 my surgeon - excuse me, electrophysiologist - popped in to say hi and tell me that he had to change clothes before we started (and if he arrived at 8:30 why the hell did I need to be there almost two hours before?!?). If you’re wondering how I know all the exact times, by the way, they had a big clock hanging near my bed to remind me. At 8:50 a different nurse came in to wheel me and my gurney to the OR so with the melody of “Nearer My God to Thee” lilting through my head the show was really about to begin.
Arriving on stage I had to maneuver myself from the gurney to the operating table, the lovely anesthesiologist came over and once again reassured me, telling me there might be a slight burning sensation as the drugs entered my system. After about a minute I was going to complain and say how right he was was but I was too busy falling asleep.
My next conscious experience was around four hours later (no clock) when I awoke in what looked like the prep room but was actually the post-op section of the facility. Still flat on my back, my lower back - which has been bothering me all week for some reason - was on fire. And my mouth felt like sandpaper. And I felt really tired. And achy all over. And my throat was extremely sore from the breathing tube they had placed for the procedure. But aside from that I felt great.
Wanting desperately to adjust my body because of my back, the nurse essentially read my mind and I couldn’t move AT ALL and needed to lie perfectly still. Not even a little? I croaked. Nope, she replied, I had to remain still for about four hours. This is gonna be fun, I surmised.
After a while they wheeled me to another recovery area where the nurse turned on the overhead tv for - it was Fox News. I asked her if she was trying to send me back into the OR and it was quickly changed to MSNBC. But the good news is Shaw was there, too! He told me it was 2:20. I was assigned yet another terrific nurse named David, who’s now my Favorite Person of the Week because after letting Shaw join me, he raised the head portion of the bed slightly so that my back was able to adjust somewhat. It was heaven!!! He also brought me apple juice and said he would bring me a muffin which I was salivating merely at the thought of but ended up being nutragrain bars that at least were soft so I silently changed his status to Favorite Person of the Month. He also said I would be released around 5:00. And I was, gloriously.
As I laid there thinking about the day and how I was feeling, I began noticing one distinct change. Because my lungs are impaired I’ve been essentially noticing almost every breath I take for the past many months because my whole chest can be painful at times. So I’d been morbidly curious as to whether this cardiac procedure would lead to any differences. Well, it has - I no longer feel as if there are two St. Bernards lying on my chest, I’m actually down to one! Of course one of the side effects of the procedure itself is some chest pain, which I have, but even factoring that in there is an overall lessening of discomfort.
Tonight Shaw picked up Italian food for dinner, because I decided that an excellent treatment for pain is medical marinara. So I ordered it with spaghetti and meatballs and it improved my condition immensely.
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