Vanquishing the Spawn of Hal

Surgery day.  I have to be at the hospital around 10:30am.  This is a long time to go without food or water after waking up.  Good thing I loaded up on food last night.

Even Southpaw can't handle deadly wipes.

Pre-op time.  First they inform me that my surgery time was running behind a little, about an hour.  Next, the nurse had me use these pre-op antibacterial skin wipes all over my body.  About 10 minutes later, my entire body started to itch from the wipes.  Oh, the fun.  Now she has to give me a sponge bath.  

Southpaw does his IV check

Next, the anesthesiologist comes in to set the IV line in my arm.  A delightful fellow who tells me that it will just be like a little bee sting as he sticks my arm.  Bee sting my ass is what I tell him.  

ID bands so they don't hurt me any more than needed.

And, now we wait.  Family gets to come back for a little visit, mom even sneaks in a friend.  The doctor stops by for one final chat.  Finally, the wheel me to the operating room around 1:45pm.  They get me situated on the operating table and begin to put me under.  This is pretty much the last thing I remember until after 10pm that night.  The surgery lasted until about 4:50pm.  After the surgery I was apparently in a lot of pain, thrashing about.  They sedated me with a nerve block and eventually moved me to my room around 8pm.  The nurse checked on me around 10:30pm.  I remembered being very thirsty and in pain.  She gave me a pain pill and some apple juice.  I also had a little jello.  About 2:30pm, I woke up in a lot of pain.  The nurse called the doctor to get authorization to give me a Dilaudid push and off to sleep I go again.