It LIVES…after a fashion

Gronk! I’m back! They ran electric current through the brain and the whole apparatus lurched to life!!!

We ended up scheduled for 10 a.m. yesterday, which meant it was noon before they rolled me off to the OR. The surgery went uneventfully and by the middle of the afternoon I was ensconced in a nice room at the Mayo Hotel Hospital. No roommate, thank goodness!

The Mayo staff are SO nice! It’s like being waited on by angels and archangels.

So far WonderSurgeon seems pleased enough with the outcome. We await results of the path report, which is always a worry…but she didn’t seem to feel too concerned. She didn’t take out any lymph nodes out; that’s how confident she is that there’s no invasive cancer in there.

But…ahem…we’ve heard the wind blow before.

At any rate, all in all it was as “pleasant” an experience as any such adventure can be. If I could dream up any complaints, it would be the food and the pillow. Bring your own pillow to the hospital! 😀 Theirs was small and hard, so that instead of cradling my head, it would let my head roll all the way over to one side or the other, so that if I dozed off I’d wake up to my neck stretched and hurting. Sort of like sleeping on a piece of lumber…

The food? Well…hospital food. One doesn’t fully grasp how terrible that is until one is confronted with it, so hungry one could cry, and finds the stuff on the tray is utterly inedible.

Wouldn’t you think in a medical establishment they’d serve you something other than salt and sugar? Last night they showed up with canned broth (salt with some chicken-flavored water added), this ICKY protein drink, two of whose top ingredients were sugar and corn syrup(!), JellO (ech! devoid of nutrition and vile to boot), and sugary lemon sherbet. This morning my head hurt from not having eaten in two days, and they served up these rolled pancake things — cold, with the flavor and texture of cardboard, along with still more sugary gunk.

When I said I just couldn’t eat that stuff, the sweet young orderly said he’d go downstairs and order something. He disappeared for two hours, during which time my son arrived, saw I was faint with hunger, and went downstairs for a bagel. By the time he got back upstairs, the young man had arrived with a pile of fresh fruit and a bowl of cottage cheese. And two slabs of salt with pork attached…uhm, pieces of bacon.

I don’t think I’ve consumed that much sodium in a month! How hard would it be to offer people something healthy for breakfast — fruit and cottage cheese (which itself is awash in sodium).

Luckily my friend Carol surfaced this afternoon with a beautiful salad and a dish of grilled chicken and fried brown rice with edame and veggies. Awesome!

It is extremely quiet on the Mayo’s hospital floors. If one weren’t attached to various monitors that beep and buzz to themselves, one could probably rest wonderfully there. I got about an hour’s sleep, maybe two, with with the machinery going off every 45 minutes or so and the nurse being required to come in about once every two hours to check vitals and surgical swelling. That was OK…I probably wouldn’t have slept any better in my own bed!

Anyway, it sure was a relief to get out.

In a week and a day, the drains come out (so it’s planned), and then, barring discovery of any stray cancer cells, I should be able to pass as human. Almost.