Surgery Recovery

I'm at home typing this so I suppose that means everything went well. I arrived at the hospital just before 7:30 as I was told. I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything before the surgery including water but I had pills I was told to take at 7:30 so I dry swallowed those. The Emirati receptionist wasn't there so the nurse had to check me in and test my blood pressure and check out if I was going to have a reaction to the anesthetic.

I was brought into the operation theater by wheelchair, but hat to walk the 10 20 meters to the table where the anesthesiologist asked if I wanted general or local anesthetic. I wasn't sure if he was joking so I said local. After thinking about it, I was glad he knocked me out anyway because I would have probably gotten bored.

I think the surgeon came in after they gave me the gas to knock me out. It was hard to tell with everyone wearing masks and me being all goofed up from the preliminary drugs. I didn't talk to him after, either, but I'm pretty sure that he was the one who did the surgery. You can see the picture of the plates taken out of my arm. The longer one was the one taken out of my arm today and the shorter one was taken out in Japan two years ago.

I remember waking up but I don't exactly remember how I got back to the room or into bed. I'm pretty sure my wife was there doing origami the whole time but not entirely certain.

Having not eaten for about 15 hours, I started eating the breakfast bars I brought from home. After a while,they brought me a big lunch and I ate a lot of that. The nurse was a bit surprised that 1) I ate most of the fish brianni that they brought me from a nearby Lebanese restaurant and 2) the choice of meal they bought me.

By about 1:30, I'd had enough of "The Best of Most Shocking Video 3" and Angry Birds is hard to play one-handed so I buzzed the nurse and asked if I could go. They said as long as I could walk, they would have me sign the papers and I could go.

I was glad they didn't make me stick around for a few days like in Japan. I was surprised with the amount of responsibility put on the patient. I had to make sure I brought my own anesthetic and chest X-rays and showed up when they wanted me there. I couldn't imagine hospitals in the States or Japan trusting people enough. When you take into account how much more irresponsible many people here are, it is mind-boggling that hospitals here trust patients with all that.