Of Life and Times

I have had a frozen shoulder for almost a year and a half now, so Elaine finally talked me into calling the doctor to have it looked at. I am so glad I finally did. We checked into the hospital at 5:30 a.m. It is an hour drive, so yeah, we got up early. The routine at hospitals nowadays drives me crazy. In an effort to make sure they are doing the correct procedure they ask you to repeat back to them what procedure you are having, who your doctor is, which body part it is and on what side of the body that part is, what your birth date and name is, etc. But it is not just the check-in clerk who asks it. The pre-op nurse asks all the questions, the surgery nurse, the attendant, everyone asks you the same battery of questions. I'll bet if I had taken too long in the bathroom the custodian would have grilled me as well. It is as if the whole hospital staff has collective amnesia and is trying to cover up by asking you to repeat everything for them. Scary.

The pre-op nurse was a southern lady, drawl still intact. She spoke rapidly and without stopping for air. Don't know how she did it. When it came time to put the I.V. into my hand she let it be known that she has only had one I.V. in her whole life, and it hurt like the dickens, so she wasn't going to tell me it would only be a poke or that it wouldn't hurt because she knew full well it would be very painful, she wasn't going to lie about it just give it to me and that would be that, because she has given a lot of these things and they always hurt so she apologized, but that is life. I'm not sure which hurt worse, the burn from the needle sliding up my vein or the assault on my ears from her perpetual sentence.

All day yesterday my arm and me were strangers. I could shake hands with myself and still feel like I was groping a stranger. It is mentally unnerving to have a body part that is connected, but not yours. The deadening of the nerve down my right side also deadened half my diaphragm so I felt short of breath all the time. I am so happy to have my own arm back today, and to be able to move it to places I have not been able to reach for a long time. I will finally be able to scratch my own back.