Went for pre-op testing today. The kind nurses at Emory St. Joseph’s sucked some blood, ripped off a quick EKG (seriously, like, two minutes), asked me about my medications, took some money (more painful than the blood), then checked my armband somewhere between 900-1,000 times.
The people there were ridiculously nice and professional. For the first time in a long time, I felt like they weren’t all trying to rush me along so they could get back to their dang cribbage game.
Health care in America. AmIright?
Anyway, they answered questions, told me about anesthesia (which still sounds to me like a cool name for a kind of modern-day, maybe Berkeley-type, Disney princess), told me about my stay (ICU for a day, then probably three days in a private room) and sent me on my way. Maybe two and a half hours there. Wasn’t bad at all.
They gave me some “literature” to read and a contraption called an “incentive spirometer,” which I will use to suck into, post-op, to exercise my lungs and stave off pneumonia and other nasty stuff like that.
All good. Full speed ahead. Planning to be on the table at 7 a.m. on my birthday.
And then …
Yeah, the doctor’s office calls. Sorry, Christine says, you don’t have to be there at 5:15 on Thursday. Get there at 7. And your surgery will start, ehhhhh, somewhere around 9. Give or take.
That’s good. That’s fine. No problem. I need some more time to think about all this anyway, ’cause I haven’t thought about it enough in the past 216+ hours since we decided to get this dang thing taken care of. Haven’t looked at a bunch of stuff on the InterWebs. Haven’t started to lose some sleep. Haven’t sighed a million sighs.
[a million and one]
But, all good. Those nice folks at ESJ need to be ready as much as I do. So I will chill for another couple hours, and be ready to go at, ehhhhhh, somewhere around 9 a.m. on Thursday. Give or take.
By that time — hopefully, with no more delays — I’ll be traipsing along in some fairytale world with Princess Anesthesia and everything will be just peachy.
Yaaaay, surgery.
[and two]
JD Blogs 
I’m binge-reading old JD posts here and doing it in reverse order. First thing I read is post-surgery, which is like a Season 4 opener. (Opener, poor choice of words).
All I can say here is that I can distinguish between anesthesia and Anastasia. I can admit, however, that in 1984, I thought Mick Jagger was saying “anesthesia” when in fact he was saying “in a state of shock.” I was younger then, and he’s never been big on enunciation.
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