Surgery Day - Morning

My surgery time is 7:30 this morning; I have to be at the hospital at 6:00am.

Yesterday my mother and I drove up to Boston; we stayed in a hotel last night. My mother will be staying there for the week. (For others having Boston surgeries, it is the Best Western Longwood, a block or two away from most of the Longwood Medical Area hospitals, including Childrens', Brigham & Women's, Beth Israel Deaconess, etc. There is a special rate for relatives of hospitalized patients.)

I did eat a smallish dinner last night. The pre-surgery eating guidelines allow you to eat up until midnight the night before the surgery, but they recommend having only a light meal. Post-midnight I can drink water until three hours before the surgery, i.e. until 4:30 this morning. Which is basically when I woke up from a night of pretty fitful sleep and could not fall back asleep. So I did get about a liter of water in me just under the wire.

I did not bring very much with me for this hospital stay -- I can't imagine I will need much that won't be provided by the hospital or available on site. (There is a CVS/pharmacy in the lobby of the hospital, and since Longwood is a neighborhood of hospitals and medical facilities, anything I could need is probably available within a 5-block radius.) My packing list included:

- glasses, contacts & solution
- my favorite sheepskin slippers
- cardigan sweater
- reading material
- laptop
- gym shorts
- pyjama pants
- bathrobe
- crutches (which I had leftover from a sports injury a couple of years ago)

Even that seems like a lot given that I'm not going to be able to get out of the bed for several days, much less change out of the hospital-issue gown I'll be in through and after surgery. The shorts/pants, bathrobe and slippers are really for later in the week when I'll be out of bed taking my first steps with the walker and then crutches.

This morning my first stop will be Pre-op Admitting to finalize my admission to the hospital (most of the admitting paperwork was done in February at my Pre-op visit). The nurse there will take my vitals, confirm that I have complied with all the appropriate medication/food/liquid restrictions required in the weeks and days before surgery, and get me changed into my surgery attire.

Next I will go up to the surgery floor, where I will meet with Dr. Millis and the anaesthesiologist. Dr. Millis will sign my hip to indicate which surgeon I belong to and which hip he is to operate on. (I suppose all patients look alike when supine with surgical bathing-caps, breathing tubes and billowing pastel gowns, so one must take more basic measures for identifying one's patients -- like writing on them with Magic Marker. You know there must be a lawsuit or two behind that rule.) Next the anaesthesiologist will start the IV, and hopefully that is the last thing I shall remember.

So now it is time to head over to the hospital. I feel tired and hungry and cold, and everything else you feel at 5:45am on a March morning. I have a bit of a headache; my right hip is at about a 1 on my pain scale. My left hip is at a zero today.

I am not nervous per se. Mostly I sense the culmination of an odd feeling I've been having all week, ticking off my "lasts" before the long period of recovery I will have ahead of me. Last tennis match, last day in the office, last subway journey, last night in my own bed in NYC, last walk with the dogs at my parents', last time driving a car (although the 3.5 hour drive up to Boston may have lessened the blow of that particular "last"). Today I will walk into that hospital feeling healthy and strong, carrying my own things, pushing through the revolving door myself, and bounding up the stairs to admitting in what will be my last "bounding" for a long while. It is quite a juxtaposition with how I'll be in half a day's time.

But my hips are built the way they are built; this surgery is a necessity. People have more complicated, emergent, painful, dangerous, experimental surgeries every day; some come out with outstanding results, some come out with complications, some don't come out at all. I have done what I could to prepare for this, I have chosen a fantastic surgeon and an excellent hospital; there is nothing more for me to do now other than trust the experts. The ball (of my hip)* is in Dr. Millis' court now.

*(Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)