Blech. I feel terrible. Why is my head so woozy? Where am I? Why am I so hot? Why does my stomach hurt? WAA! Oh, hello nurse-looking person. Ah yes, surgery. Hospital. Internal organ amputation. What? You say I look pale? Is that norm...ZZZZZZZZZZZ?
Oh, hello. What time is it? What day is it? Still Friday? You want me to get up? You mean, get up out of bed? Are you insane! Oh, you’re serious. Um, okay. Er, some help here. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ooch. Ouch. Okay, sitting on the edge of the bed. Whew. Stand up? Are you sure about this? But I just got to the edge of the bed here. Isn’t there some sort of mandatory waiting period between episodes of excruciating pain? Okay, here we go…hoo-ah! That wasn’t so bad. I’m standing, anyway. But what’s that funny feeling? Oh, I know. Barf bucket please. Thank you very much. Most kind. I had no idea one could barf and remain standing. How interesting. Walk? You gotta be kidding. Oh, just to that chair two and a half steps away. Okay, I can do that. No big problem. Oh great. I bet you want me to sit in it now while you make my bed. That’s gonna hurt, you know. Dammit. Bitches! I hate all of you! Oh, you’re here to give me a sponge bath. I do feel rather sweaty and icky. Ahhhh…that feels nice.
I’m sitting here essentially naked while a strange woman washes me. Where are my inhibitions? Maybe they amputated them along with my uterus. Good. They just got in the way most of the time, anyway.
The remainder of that day is sketchy. Various nurses show up, usually just as I’m about to doze off. One shows me how to use the Morphine button to self-administer my pain meds. The machine keeps track and cuts you off before you accidentally overdose yourself. Bummer, because that's way before the pain goes away. Another nurse gives me a deep breathing exerciser disguised as a toy and tells me to play with it ten times per hour. Yeah right, that’s going to happen. I try to sleep but the oxygen alarm keeps going off, followed closely by a nurse coming in and telling me to breathe. Funny, no one told me my body would forget how to breathe.
Finally, the doctor drops by to tell me everything went fine, although my uterus was so big from the fibroid she had to wiggle it to get it out through the 4” incision. She won’t be around for the weekend so she’ll see me on Monday unless I feel good enough to go home before then. Fat chance. Woozy Wanda is staying right here until she can walk without barfing, thank you. Before the doctor leaves, she says the hospital food is exceptionally bad but I should try to eat anyway. Every one of these people tells me I look pale. No one has a mirror.
I share a room with two other women the first night and the nurses come in every couple of hours to gather our vitals. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the Addams Family door that makes a loud screeching sound every time it opens. I expect brain-eating zombies to come through at any moment. I ask the nurse to leave it open so it doesn’t wake us up on the next visit, but that turns out to be a bad idea. Apparently, outside every hospital door, no matter what the time of day, life goes on as if it’s daytime and everyone has a job to do. People chat. People walk. Phones ring. Babies cry. It’s chaos.
Speaking of babies, does anyone else think it’s a bad idea to put hysterectomy patients on the same floor as new mothers and their babies? I realize that I did not, in fact, want children, but what if I did? What if it was my life’s greatest desire to have a baby but ended up needing a hysterectomy instead? How awful to wake from surgery to hear brand new babies crying and see new mothers walking the halls. Honestly, I just don’t know what they were thinking.
Continued at Part 4
