just like a piece of cake...

So I called the nurse a couple of days ago because I had a more questions about the foot surgery I’m supposed to have. My questions were fairly easy: are you for sure it will be 6 weeks before I’m able to drive? Are you sure you can’t do both feet at once? How long will it be until I can get in a dress shoe? (All of this is a.k.a. when exactly will I have my social life back.)

I tried to explain to her my situation. It is after all, unlike no other. See the entire month of May I have very important things to do. I’m pretty much booked solid. Then I have a bridal shower to go to in July at Schlitterbahn. Then I have a vacation in October. I also have a wedding I’m in in February. I also have this thing I like to call restlessness, so I can’t stay at home for long periods of time. It makes me sick. No, I mean it…really, really sick. I start having driving and shopping withdraws and then I’ll get a horrible migraine.

After explaining all of this to the nurse, she tried to use a scare tactic. I quote her, “You need to take this seriously. This is a major surgery. He will be cutting and taking out some bones. You are going to have to give your foot time to heal. You need to make time for it.”

Whatever.

I guess I have hard time with this because I don’t consider this “major” surgery. When I hear major surgery, I think heart bypass, leaky valve (or is that a car?). Not cutting some bones in your foot. It’s just a foot! After all, it’s only day surgery.

I don’t mean to downplay it. I get that it’s important and all, but it always could be worse. Maybe all of this comes from watching my parents go in and out of the hospital since I was a kid. They’ve had organs taken out, veins tied and a lot more other major parts of the body cut into. So compare that to foot surgery and it should be a piece of cake right?

As I took my dad to the hospital today, I was thinking this is really all normal to me – register at the desk, go back to the room, change into the hospital gown, get the IV put into you, have the anesthesiologist come in, he/she makes you count back from 10 as he gives you the sleepy medicine, family leaves as they roll you out. (Believe it or not, there are some nurses that know my family and I by first name.) The only difference is I’m the one who will be in the bed.