I missed writing my blog last week not because of the surgery but because I just wasn't sure what I was supposed to write about or what I was supposed to say. I didn't want to turn it into a pity party about my surgery but I also didn't want to push it aside and write a humorous blog like nothing happened. So I waited until I was inspired.
The most interesting part of my stay at Piedmont Hospital and my journey there were the people. The amazing incredible array of people I met from every culture and lifestyle possible. And how many of them opened up to me and shared their lives with me to help me feel more comfortable while I was in pain.
I met a woman from Thailand during my pre-op check in who survived breast cancer and shared her amazing story with me. I had ran 18 miles the day before surgery and my veins were dehydrated and she was having trouble getting the main line in. So we talked while she warmed my veins with hot compresses. She told me the story of when she woke up on Wednesday when her surgery was Monday with no idea what happened and kept asking her kids "where is my tuesday?" She wanted her Tuesday back.
When you get to your hospital room, there are 2 objects on the wall in front of you clear in view. One is a black and white clock. The other is a dry erase board. On the board they list the nurses who are taking care of you by their first names. The first shift I was there, I was so jacked up on morphine that I could not read the board nor understand what on earth those names meant. I feel sorry for those nurses because I would just find the call button, push it several times and yell "pain" into the box when they asked me what I wanted. I actually am laughing while writing this because I now realize how rude it was for me to do that...but at the time, it was all I could muster.
The clock. That damn black and white clock. I stared and stared at that clock. I bargained with that clock. I was in that room for 48 hours. I can promise you it felt like a month. I would beg the clock every 10 minutes to make me feel better, to make me feel normal. Pretty much now I know that was the morphine and anesthesia talking but at the time I pretty much would trade anything to make the time go by faster. When the bargaining went from 10 minute period to one hour periods, I knew life was improving.
When the second shift of nurses got there, I had a little more decorum about my shouts into the white squawking box. I would look up on the board, pick a nurse and yell her name into the box. As the time wore on, I actually used "please" and "thank you". Mary O was truly a guardian angel for me. Typically assigned to the orthopedic surgery floor, she was doing a shift on general surgery. She treated me like I was her own daughter and for that 12 hour period, I relied on her immensely. The hospital didn't have a clue on what I could eat and she gave her own greek yogurt to me. She shared stories about her life with me and she did things that went way beyond the call of duty. I will go back and find her to thank her in person because I'd like her to know what an impact she makes on her patients lives.
There were also numbers of people who had the same surgery who just happened to show up in my life like the anesthesiologist and two of my parents neighbors. They proudly pulled down the necks of their shirts to show me their scars and tell me their stories.
All of these things helped me mentally which helps me physically. Within the first few days, I worried that perhaps IMFL might be out of the cards for me and that to recover and then train and race with less than 60 days to go, might be too big a task to take on. And then I realized it was really just like the clock in the room. I only have to think about the next 10 minutes. Nothing more. And when I get past that ten minutes, the next 10 will be there. And then the next hour. And I don't have to take on any more than that right now.
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