Atonement

27 March - Well, today is the day of the scaphoid operation, almost a full three months after the accident. Treid to do a few errands in the morning but was thwarted by the always unhelpful Canada postal workers. There seems to be a fair amount of camaraderie between all of the delivery workers (flower guys, UPS, fedex, drivers and bikers) but the postal workers, especially the ones who work in the offices, are just a bunch of wankers. In any event was given a call by the surgical centre to ask if I could come in early as they were running ahead of schedule. Headed straight therre and was greeted by a very effusive if somewhat fake sounding receptionist and after correcting my misspelt name tag I was issued with a standard uncloseable gown, hairnet, paper booties and a nice housecoat which would have made a great souvenir if I had anywhere to steal it away. The anaesthesioligist was slightly irritating, being a little too fascinated with my medical history than I felt comfortable with (you had a hypospadius operation at how old???) but after assuring him that I wouldn’t die under his sleeping drug cocktail it wasn’t long before I was lying down on an operating table, IV in one hand, the other marked with the entry points for the drill. I always find it fascinating whenever I’m going in for general anaesthetic. One minute i'm fully conscious and listening to them tell me I’m about to go under and the next minute I wake up in the post op bed with an aching body part, bad taste in my mouth and a crick in my neck. My hand was painted with an antiseptic makng it appear as if I’d just plunged it into a vat of boiling oil but on the whole it was more uncomfortable than anything else. Because I was started early I finished early and there was a couple of hours I had to wait for Mark to finish work to come and pick me up. I was too dizy to make conversation with the nurses but they were very nice, making inane chatter and readjusting me to ever more uncomfortable positions in the bed every time I squirmed around too much. I love nurses - they are the absolute backbone of western medicine - they put up with so much, they've nearly always got a cheerful and friendly demeanour which makes the sterile atmosphere of a hospital or surgical centre tolerable, and they do it for a fraction of the pay that the doctors get. If there's a job in this world that could guaranettee you a ticket to the fictional good place in the next world nursing would be it (unless the nurse happens to be one of the evil ones like nurse Ratchett or the one that the bewitched girl played in that movie with Kirk douglas). However, I won’t deny that I was bored out of my skull - I couldn’t see because i'd removed my contacts before surgery and even after putting my glasses on I was too dizzy to focus on the book i'd brought with me. Jennifer, one of the nurses, asked me if I was bored - yeah, a little. Would you like a ginger ale? Sure ... Not sure how that would imrpvode the boredom factor but I was pretty thirsty. Eventuallygot moved into one of the side rooms where I watched a couple of episodes of Friends, which was about all my fuzzy brain could handle and after a little while Mark turned up and we cabbed it home. The house was stinking of weed - apparently Rene, knowing that he''s leaving in a few days, has decided that the no smoking in the house rule can now be ignored and none of us have can be bothered risking a confrontation by telling him to stop. It's not exactly an unpleasant smell but I drew the line at him lighting a cigartte in the living room.
Tried to field a few familycalls in the evening but just couldn’t string more than a few sentences together - a combination of extra strength codeine and ibuprofen as well as the remnants of the sleeping cocktail had made me a bit of a vegetable. Mark kindly went out to get my script filled from the pharmacy and also to get a few staples to get us through the night - my requests were a blueberry pie, a loaf of country grain flour and some movies (id suggested either capote or wallace and grommet - which was probably at my level at the tim). Upon his return he has a bumbeberry crumbke pie, a half block of wholewheat bread and sideways and shake hands with the devil. Never send out a boy to do a mans job. It was like hed gone out and returned from one of those very similar but slightly different parallel universes like 'Universe Without A J'. It was pretty much what I asked for but completely wrong nonetheless. The bumbeberry pie was very nice but my brain craved bllueberry and rhubarb and apple, while delicious in their own right, were nothing more than pollutants in my mind that night. Also, i'd seen Sideways and the documentary which was about Romeo Dollaire, the Canadian general who headed the UN mission to Rwanda was fascinating but too much about him and not reallythe easy viewing experience I craved on my recuperation ight. In any event, seemed to survive the first day abd am hoping its going to get easier from now on. Not looking forward to shaving, showering, dressing, typing, surviving, travelling with one hand but freedom with one hand is probably comparable to imprisonment with two so am looking on the bright side.