A quiet arrival at 5:00 a.m. in the Sutter Medical Center lobby.
A second waiting room, on the 3rd floor, where today's surgical sacrifices can chill a bit.
At least I have my "Breaking Bad" socks on.
Time for the obligatory groin shave and changing into a hospital gown.
These days, I play Sudoku on an app on my iPhone. The app features so much advertising that it's an excellent example of what E.L. Doctorow has labelled "enshittification." The app would would be wonderful if there was no advertising, but instead it's barely tolerable. Anyway, among the things they advertise is what looks like a pretty lame game called "Royal Match." The advertising features a doofus-looking king trapped in a pipe as a large serpent approaches through the pipe. The poor king! I could not care less about such a king.
Anyway, I overheard someone, presumably a nurse, strongly-recommending "Royal Match" to a fellow health care worker. I could barely believe my ears!
A nurse started rolling me to the operation room on a gurney. By chance, we started talking about "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul," and so I started elaborating on my theories about the Hopi influence in both shows. She was interested, since she was a native of Flagstaff, AZ, so I kept talking about the Hopis as we rolled into the operating room.
All of a sudden, a dozen masked people began swarming me from all sides. They seemed pleasant, but insistent. They were interested in slapping tags on my back (to help precisely-locate the heart). They inflated a big pillow under me in order to move me from the gurney to a table. They reinflated the bag twice in order to get my location on the table exactly right.
I kept yammering about the Hopis and the TV shows. They seemed very interested. They put a mask over my mouth. I kept talking. I heard the anesthesiologist say, "You need to inhale." I didn't want to inhale, and I kept talking. Suddenly, I felt very strange, and that was that.
- - -
Later, I woke up in a noisy recovery room. They rolled me to Bay 17 on the 3rd floor.
After awhile, I had to pee pretty bad. They told me to pee but also remain facing up. Very unnatural. I used too much pressure and popped the clot on the catheter insert location in the groin, which leads to a major artery. I began to bleed out - a real vampire's feast! The nurse came, and using an implement, efficiently voided my bladder. She also placed maximum pressure on the bleeding wound, for about 20 minutes, in order to finally stop the bleeding.
The bleeding postponed my release time about three hours. It was about 7 p.m. when I was released.
Postsurgery - me want more popcorn!
Cheerier.
"The Book of the Hopi."
Rachel helped with many aspects of this day, particularly getting me home and dinner that evening.
Ready for discharge!
Then the trip home, some Thai food, and rest.
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