November 22, 2013

My surgery was relatively uneventful, so I didn’t write much about it.

Basically, I got to the surgical center, took my clothes off and put on the stylish robe, then sat there. I talked to nurses and the anaesthesiologist and the doctor and filled out paperwork and read. Eventually they wheeled me into the operating room and sometime in all the bustle of getting me arranged on the table, the anaesthesiologist must have started a drip of something into my feed, because I was unconscious and I remember nothing of the transition.

When I came to, it was a matter of feeling woozy for a while, then being in the car with my parents, then getting into bed and everything got warm and Zzzzzzz….

All in all, as non-traumatic as surgery can be.

Before they started on me, I had to sign a consent form, in which the doctor’s assistant ran me through a list of all the stuff they were going to do – and might do – to me. So it started off with:

• closed reduction of mandibular fracture
• orthostatic immobilization
• possible open reduction of fracture

I helpfully translated those for the assistant as:

• Push it back in place
• Wire it together so it doesn’t move
• Possibly, you get a pirate scar

As it happened, I didn’t get the pirate scar.