I just want to say up front that the folks at St. Thomas have an air of professional courtesy and friendliness around them that really made this whole process a lot less scary than it otherwise might have been.
So, we got there at about 6 and about six fifteen, six twenty, they called my number and I got into a wheel chair and they wheeled me back to a room full of beds and curtains. I took off all my clothes, put them in a bag, took out my contacts, put them in that same bag, and then laid on the bed, under the blanket, waiting for someone to tell me if I could go to the bathroom.
Unfortunately, they came in like a swarm of flies, nurses and anethesiologists and more nurses and doctors and before I knew it, I was hooked up to a bunch of stuff and had an iv started, so I had to interupt everything to go to the bathroom, but I explained that I was a nervous pee-er and they said they’ve seen worse.
The nurses pestered me for about twenty minutes as to whether I needed a pregnancy test and I declined it, repeatedly. Imagine, then, how annoyed they were with me when my “husband” showed up later. He claims he said he was my “cousin” and they just heard husband. I hear folks use that at the border all the time, too. “I just said that the U.S. is my country for getting porridge in. I cannot help it if they heard that ‘the U.S. is my country of origin.'”
But whatever.
They then wheeled me to the operating room and spent a lot of time tucking me in like a giant burrito and that’s really the last thing I remember, being tucked in and strapped in. Then I remember waking up being pissed off at John Prine and then being wheeled through the halls and hearing someone ask if that was me and just like that, I was fake married to Mack.
He accompanied us to the recovery room and stayed with me long enough to flirt with all my nurses. Here’s how smooth he is:
“And what’s your last name, Gloria?”
“Gus-man.”
“Gus-man? Don’t you mean Goozemahn?”
“Well, no one around here can pronounce it correctly.”
“Goozemahn? They can’t let a beautiful name like that roll over their tongue and drip off their lips. Goozemahn, like the first kiss of a strong man. Goozemahn. Like biting into a fruit you intend to share with your lover. Oh, Gloria Goozemahn, how can it be that these gringos cannot say your name correctly?”
And then they both glare at me, like it’s my fault Nurse Goozemahn can’t get called by her right name.
So, anyway, imagine Nurse Gusman’s disappointment when she came back to ask me if I had someone compitent to take care of me and Mack was gone, only to be replaced by the three incompitent people who are supposed to be watching over me.
Guess who’s sitting home alone right now as we speak?
Well, not alone. I’ve got Mrs. Wigglebottom.
As for the after-effects. I think the surgeon did a great job with the incision. He put it right in a neck wrinkle and I’m convinced that, once the bruising goes down, you won’t really notice it. He didn’t put any stitches in. He just glued me back together.
The pain in the butt has just been how much my throat hurts from being intubated. Otherwise, the incision itself isn’t really painful. It more just hurts if I roll on it wrong or tug on it too abruptly with turning or getting up too quickly.
Oh, yeah, and I guess y’all want to know what they found out. Well, it turns out that my lymph node was infected, which was not high on the list of things it might be, so I don’t know. They didn’t prepare me for that contingency. They did, however, drain it so that they can analyze the fluid and they took some tissue that they can analyze that as well.
I should hear on Monday or Tuesday what they discovered.
I can’t thank you all enough for all your well-wishes. It’s really amazing and comforting to know that I have a large community of people who care about me and who are keeping me in mind through the weirdness that has been my life lately.
Tiny Cat Pants 