The knee bone’s connected to the- head bone!

Dr. Anesthetist: How are you feeling?

Me: Cold, your OR feels like a refrigerator.

Dr. : I’ll fix that. I will give you a cocktail. (Holding up a syringe)

Me: What flavor is it?

Dr: You will like it, it is warm.

And it was warm. Warm and fuzzy. At some point, between the warmness and the fuzzification, I looked up and saw a familiar white meniscus on the TV screen hovering above me, and realized that my orthopedic surgeon had already begun the arthroscopy without me even having felt it.

I tried to look over the blue sheet that concealed the actual gore from me and asked my Dr. Ortho, “Hey, did he give me the spinal anesthetic?”

Dr. Ortho nodded and went on with his work. I turned my head and located Dr. Anesthetist.

“Hey, did you give me the spinal?”

“Of course!”

“When?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“Oh.”

I missed it. I have no memory of being turned over or poked in the spine. The one thing that was seriously freaking me out about my surgery I totally missed. Hooray! I figure perhaps I zonked out immediately after I received the ‘cocktail,’ because I am fairly sure that I maintained consciousness all the way until the point where the Ortho said that my meniscus had a huge tear in it, the edge was too frayed to repair, and that he would try to remove the most damaged parts and save what he could.

And I said, “That’s annoying,” and then I woke up in the recovery room with my teeth chattering. And for some reason, my skin itching as well. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but at some point I stopped itching and fell asleep again, and woke up in the my room with Mona somewhere vaguely nearby. And she had cookies.

And then I woke up four hours later wondering if I really had seen Mona, and it turns out that if she had been a dream then at least the cookies were real. As were the Doritos, the water, the box of tissues and the M&M’s. Thank you Mona, the munchies produced by your ethereal presence saved me from starvation. And we need to get together sometime ago when I’m slightly more conscious, but you’re still awesome.

I didn’t really and truly wake up until around eight in the evening. I did have several phone conversations before then, but I’m not really sure what I told people, hah. It was established, however, that Owlie had mis-read her return ticket, and was returning imminently instead of the next day, and so by around 10 that night Hemlock and TFL brought me Owl and some lovely rich chocolate cake direct from the airport

I was discharged from the hospital the next day, and my Momma picked me up, and then we went to pick Khalid up from OT. (Occupational Therapy) He hadn’t seen me for about 36 hours, and when I walked into the room and sat down (and accidentally dropped my crutches on the floor) he began fawning all over me and hugging me. And giggling. Which was lovely.

And then we drove home and met up with Iman, who hugged me, and then hit me, and then hugged me, and then both of the kids fought over my crutches. (Khalid won. He’s decided that they are ‘tick! [stick]) and believe it or not- Iman began limping. There is no doubt about it, and it was hysterical and very weird- she was following me around and limping, and periodically looking up at me to make sure she was doing it right. She’s amazing, and so tremendously silly.

Within an hour it was time to go again, because as it turns out, Owlie was having a severe wisdom tooth infection, and my dentist had agreed to see her that very afternoon, but she had never seen him before and didn’t know where his office was. So we sped off to Abu Dhabi, having just been in Dubai less than two hours ago, and my dentist (the same one who tried to get me to dislocate my own jaw, good times!) removed Owlie’s tooth right then and there. Or what was left of it, rather. It had been partially impacted, and broken too.

And by then I ran out of steam, fell asleep in the car, and upon arriving back home, stumbled out of the car and into bed for another two hours. I woke up at 9 pm feeling much improved, and with icecream in my lap and a bag of frozen corn on my knee, I proceeded to defeat both of my parents in Scrabble.

The moral of this story? I am not a post-op superman. Today is the end of post-op Day Two, and although I’ve been able to put the crutches aside for hobbling around the house, I’m still very, very tired and physically exhausted. I’m not in a tremendous amount of pain, I’d say about a five on a scale of one to ten- not enough to make you cry, but just enough to give you a perpetual wince.

Hf is coming home in umm… 68 hours! Here’s hoping I’m recovered enough to actually be able to pick him up from the airport!