I’m back home, minus some liver. Excellent pre-surgery dinner at ThaiPop (really, really good), got my orders to report for surgery at 10 am. Perfect. The cars in the hotel parking lot were from all over: Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, White Earth, Georgia. Decided to reframe the “inconvenience” of driving a whole hour and a half from my house to get world-class medical treatment. In the waiting room prior to surgery, directed all of my nervous, negative energy on an older woman who was wearing one of those clear face shields, only on the top of her head like the world’s most pointless golf visor. Masks are required in all of the Mayo campus buildings, and she was apparently the exception. She never stopped talking; wanted to know what everyone was there for, asked one poor dude about his visible leg rash. I was surprised how everyone engaged with her. Too nice to actively shun her? Too freaked out about their own reasons for being in a Mayo hospital surgical waiting room to protest the onslaught of her, more likely.
I’m fuzzy about what happened next, but I woke up to being told there wasn’t a room at the hospital I was currently in, so they were moving me by ambulance to another hospital. It was early evening by the time I was settled, and I was starving – and still on a clear liquid diet. I was hooked to oxygen, IV fluids, a catheter. The nurse brought me some Jell-O cups, and Bob warned me to take it easy. I think he meant that I should NOT proceed to consume a total of seven Jell-O cups, aka all the Jell-Os on the ward. But I did. I think the last one is what pushed me over the edge; it was sugar free, so there was artificial sweetener in addition to red dye. About 1 am, I started to feel quite unwell. I had a burning pain in my stomach, I was shaky and felt like I was starting a panic attack. I asked my nurse for some Ativan, but it wasn’t on my orders, so no go – meanwhile, she was bustling around because my oxygen was low and my heart rate was high. I was obviously crashing.
For some reason I thought the vast quantity of pretty pink froth I Exorcist puked into the small tub would be cool to have for a Barbie pool party. Though I don’t know who would want to play Barbies in a vat of vomit. I felt better pretty much instantly. The hospitalist stopped to check on me, and thought I’d be totally fine if I avoided any further Jell-O consumption. The rest of my hospital stay was basically uneventful, except for later the night of the Jell-O incident, my nurse didn’t attach my catheter bag correctly, so everything just emptied on the floor. In the dark. Right where various medical personnel stood to check on me throughout the night. My nurse was pretty upset about it (she hadn’t clamped something correctly), and I don’t think she found my commentary about urine being sterile helpful. If anything was going to be tracked all over the ward…
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