THE Operation

On 19th of December I went under the knife. I had been waiting for this for a year or so. Ever since I broke my arm two years ago, it's been stated that the titanium plate they inserted to support the fracture, has to come out. After 12 months, preferably. But since the people at Universität Spital Basel are lame-asses, it never seemed happen, until I realized that probably I should ask the surgeon, who put the plate in in the first place.

So I called the Spital Schwyz and everything started to roll immediately. They actually asked me when I would like to schedule the operation. Cool. Asap.

So there I was, at 7:15 in the morning of the 19th. In a hospital surrounded by snowy hills. Landscape pretty. Me jittery.

The anesthesiologist  was cool. He said to me that I have two options. They can knock me out completely for the operation or I could choose the local anesthesia. This would mean, that they squeeze the blood supply to my arm shut with a cuff and then inject the stuff that makes the arm go numb only to my arm. I would be awake for the duration of the surgery. "Can I get some music, so that I don't have to listen to the surgery?" Yeah, sure, music was available. So I chose the local anesthesia. Thought I might be at least more interesting of an experience.

In the OR, the nurse who was taking care of me asked what I'd prefer for music. Choices being classical, classical, classical, classical, classical, Bruce Springsteen, classical, classical... "Hey, what'd ya said about Bruce?" So Bruce it was, to accompany me to the surgery.

The operation itself was a strange experience. I somehow was aware of my arm, but couldn't feel anything real. Some nipping and tugging, but no pain at all. Could hear the surgeon cursing about lousy screwdriver =) And they had fancy lamps there in the OR,  a cluster of bulbs in warm white, cold white, green and blue. Sad thing that you cannot take a camera to OR, so therefore no pic. I could use that kind of clusters in some performance, they would look great. -Well, this is what you get if you roll a light designer to a OR, I guess.

The whole thing was over in little bit over half an hour and thy rolled me back to my room. Around 13:30 in the afternoon they said that I could leave. Cool. Over in a whim. Not so bad at all. Now I have to keep a bandage over the stitches for two weeks and then I'm good to roll again. The stitches will dissolve on their own, so no post-op procedures necessary.

Was it real? A tag on my bed post...

It'll take a while before my arm is as good as it was before the whole ordeal, but nonetheless, I'm ever so happy that the stupid metal is finally out of my body.