Got there early, parking was ass. I was not allowed ice chips until after. I technically may have cheated about the amount of water I drank, but only by a factor of like 2, and with the way I go through fucking water it was not an untruth with any consequence. (I stopped eating early, drank quite a bit prior to 3am, then had a cup of plain water and also a cup of clear soda during the time I was supposed to have only one cup of them combined.)
(My mouth is a desert still, a few hours after getting home, but it's gradually getting less bad. I have the vague ambition to lie down in a water vapor room for a while. I have a big cup of mint tea and the thing that started making the difference was inhaling the vapor off the top. Belovedest ran out to get the two different kinds of nose sprays the surgeon recommended, and so far I've used one of the saline sprays.)
Taught nurse #1, M., that the lower arm cuff is not a rectangle, and (as he observed) you will get bad readings off it if you put it on upside-down. It took pointing at the diagram on the cuff to show him, but he went for that orientation on try #3, after the first two were sky-high and Felt Very Wrong. We bonded over Stupid Body Tricks (he has one of the same conditions as me, and his body reacts similarly to mine if we've not been able to eat for long enough).
Nurse #2 was J., and she broke the bad news about the ice chips. Bleh. We got through the endless questions with humor and the occasional pause. This, I said with some gravity, was my
second rodeo.
The anaesthesiologist, Dr. S, came through and looked at my throat (which I cooperatively widened) and neck extension. As per my Kaiser 2016 anaesthesiologist (a Black man who shares my birthday) it was good. My neck was ordered to not misbehave itself and do a cramp.
Dr. O also came and said hi.
Then came the IV insertion.
( Cut for those as who don't want to hear about that. ) There was about an hour between finishing up the setup and the time when I was to get wheeled down, so Belovedest and I spent some quiet time in the room. I was fantastically bored but also Belovedest was WFH (Working From Hospital) so I unilaterally decided they weren't available for conversation. Though I did say that we were Simply Not Allowed to boink in the hospital. I poked the internet and played some clickygames. I was about to attempt to correct the internet's name for the parking garage that the hospital calls something different when it was suddenly Time for Fun! We worked out who had what (I kept my taken-off clothes instead of the fresh change of clothes I had in the other bag because it seemed like too much of a fuss to swap them, my cane, glasses and notebook with pen, Belovedest kept my phone) and the new short person whose pronouns I did not actually ask while I was still thinking about them came and swept me off to the OR around 1:30. They (pronoun anonymous form) were aware of my pronouns
and clocked Belovedest's; their friend group is about half they/them these days they said.)
I requested to stay with my glasses as long as possible, so I was able to look around the operating room. The various people were there! I was delighted to see them! I got a much better look at this OR vs. the Kaiser one due to the glasses. This one was also full but seemed less crowded. The whole thing was pale blue (not beige, or baige), and there were various monitors mounted around on arms off the ceiling or something. Many of them were on but playing test signals. I was allowed to creep like a crab from my transfer-bed over to the operating table, which was an autonomy improvement on Kaiser where I got levitated there on a float blanket. There was a great big multifaceted light or two above me. I positioned myself in the center, got a pillow under my knees, and a seat belt to keep my legs in place. At this point everything started happening very fast: arm boards, getting my arm in a place where the IV didn't kink on me, affixing stickers to various parts of me. "Ooo, especially the fun ones with the snaps on!" I said in delight. (This got a humorous reaction, because that was exactly the sort.)
After the giggle juice started flowing in, I found it extremely difficult to keep the different parts of the light aligned in my vision. Unlike Kaiser, that was the last thing I remember. I was told there'd be a countdown, but that part did not get recorded.
Just like last time, I woke up in recovery. My recollections of this are a bit scrambled in order. I said, "I'm Azz!" then immediately corrected myself to the acceptable form of my wallet name. Take that, transphobes. When (Dr.?) K. (first name, except not horrible and from Desert Bluffs) in my section noticed that I was awake, he pulled the curtains around me closed, but not before I noticed that the clock read somewhere around 3. I didn't drift back off as I had last time, and concluded that it's probably much easier to come out of general when you've been under less long. My nose hurt about a 4 and my throat was sore. I got a pain pill. I contemplated asking for an ibuprofen to top that off, but decided against it. I did, very promptly, ask for ice, please. And ice I got. Yay!
K. said something about hoping that I would be able to breathe better after I got my nasal stents out. "After?" I said, or words to that effect.
POV: you're waking up in Recovery after an operation and you hear a little voice warbling "No more notes! No more ghost! Here's a health! Here's a toast! To a prosperous year... "
ok ok but hear me out,
I COULD BREATHE AT LAST
also despite the sore throat my voice was working
-- Azure Jane Lunatic,
7:37pm * Nov 1, 2022 and furthermore, it was somewhere in my upper range without getting graveled out or choking me.
K. made a call out of the department, saying that "she, woops,
they," had woken up and was doing fine. After he got off the call, I smilingly praised him for getting it wrong and correcting in the exact right fashion. He (slightly defensively, mostly explanatorily) said that he had 60+ years of "they" being only groups. I cheerfully pointed out that singular "they" goes back to at least Shakespeare's time, but it's mostly used for people where you don't know who they are, and gave an example sentence with a lost item. He allowed as how that made sense, and I told him again that it takes practice and he's doing it exactly right. I hope he feels good about having gotten it right despite how he thinks he's doing.
I got rolled back to the schnozz ward and slowly became fit for reality again. They'd hydrated me quite a bit while I was out, and I had to use the bathroom. I learned how to change my dressing. There was a game of phone tag where they tried to find Belovedest, who of course was in the part of the building where there was not signal. When Belovedest arrived I had to go
again, and then again when we got home. Yay hydration.
Belovedest went down to pick up my prescriptions, there was a different comedy of errors with the guy who came to wheel me out who at first came to the wrong room and found it empty, but Belovedest and I arrived at the same entrance within a short amount of time, I loaded in, and we were off for home.
I have been grumpy and pained and hysterical and most of all with Very Dry Mouth, but slowly getting my mouth comfortable with the concept of breathing while retaining moisture. There's already less bleeding, though when I sniffle and then cough out red, I feel very Victorian Maiden. Or almost Dulcinea, I suppose...
Alex helped me make mint tea. Silver went out and got the two types of nose wash because I had started to offer hysterics. Steph offered to help eat the blueberries that were kicked out of the fridge to make room for a thing of raspberry jello that is probably hard enough to eat now. (Uh.) 💙 I am loved all out of proportion to my bitchiness right now.
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ryan will email the small list of friends and family who need immediate updates, and then my friends with the keys will update DW at their discretion. 
