Obadiah Convalesence Blog: Part 3

I'm back! I have not slept, but I have been eating. The light headedness is not as bad but the pain in my arm is getting a little worse so I went ahead and took some of the pain meds that they gave me. I had some friends stop by to see me and they said I look pale. As white as I am, you know I must REALLY look pale if someone notices. :) They brought me a big bag of M&Ms. I gotta be careful not to pack on pounds with all this stuff. :)

The day:

The day started early and the biggest bummer of it all was that I wasn't allowed to drink. Are you kidding? Nikki will testify to the fact that I drink probably 2 liters of fluid before 9 o'clock. Seriously. I got up around 8... and it was a lot of time to go without water!

The hospital sign in process was pretty painless and after a short jaunt of sitting in a waiting room I was back in the pre-op area. (I actually purchased a magazine which we all realize is nothing more than someone printing out the internet... but I did it anyway. EGM isn't bad, but at $6 it is WAY overpriced.) This brought me to the most "revealing" part of the entire day: the hospital gown. Because I was getting general anesthesia I had to be COMPLETELY naked under my hospital gown. I had never given much thought to how much of our personality is built into our clothing. It is, in many ways, a physical barrier to the most private parts of our bodies just as our "surface" personality is a barrier to the most private parts of our hearts and minds. The "forced" removal of this physical barrier had a profound impact on the psychological barrier as well. I felt as if any "bravado" that I had brought in the door with me was taken away.

Now, this all sounds a bit ridiculous given that I was given utter privacy and was not left naked but was given a gown with which to cover up. The initial effects diminished but the level of control that I willingly submitted myself to was amazing. I went into a room where I let them tell me how to dress, I let them draw my blood, and was even willing to put myself completely under their power by willingly robbing myself of consciousness.

It made me think of two things:

1. Death row inmates are not allowed to wear their shoes into the death chamber. In Dead Man Walking, the inmate on death row was adamant about keeping his shoes on and was totally broken when forced to exchange them for slippers.

2. We've all seen photos of genocide that happens the world over and one thing that is common in these photos is that people are stripped of their clothing. I always viewed this as a physical form of cruelty but my heart broke a little bit more today as I realized that it was and is more than a physical violence.

These are heavy thoughts and I wouldn't want to in any way equate the experience I had today with the things I have listed above. I'm simply saying that those brief moments have given me a deeper understanding of things I have seen in the past and I'm certain that it will give me a greater capacity for compassion in the future.

All the nakedness aside....

All those years co-hosting the RIOT came back to me in those moments before surgery as I remembered all the stories we laughed about in which people were operated on for the wrong things, found tattooos on their bodies, etc. This concern was misplaced. They went to painstaking lengths to be certain that I was the correct patient and to more than quadruple confirm on multiple occassions that I was receiving the proper procedure. They even shaved my right arm... yeah... My right arm is missing about half of its hair. That's REALLY cool. I told the orderly to shave the other arm so it matched. He laughed... but only a little.

Heading into the op room I was subjected to Sunny 95 and found out that my doctor actually prefers QFM96. I was about to suggest RadioU when I woke up in recovery. Seriously. I knew they had started the IV drip on my knockout juice but I had no idea it would hit me so quickly! I woke up in recovery with minimal nausea and I was out of recovery in about 30 minutes!

The rest of the day has involved me sitting on my butt. I have played a minor amount of PS3 and probably shouldn't be sitting here typing as my arm is supposed to be eleveated but I thought I'd just give all of you a shout out before diving back into my recovery cave. Thanks for your prayers and thank you, Nick, for covering for me! (and Nikki for being Nikki and "having no problem with that whatsoever")

-Obadiah