Hip Decompression

This is a drill in my left hip. Fortunately, I was unconscious.

And so it was that one very, very early morning in mid-June of this year I found myself in a car with my wife driving to an outpatient surgery facility in the middle of shopping center. It felt odd walking in, knowing that I would soon be under general anesthesia about 100 yards across from a huge grocery store. 

I was scheduled to have the surgery at 8am, but had to report in at 6:30 in the morning. As soon as I arrived, I was checked in, asked to change into a gown, and had an IV started. Several nurses came by to verify a bunch of information, and my left hip was clearly marked to ensure that the correct joint was being operated on. My surgeon came by to say hello, to sign the left hip to further make sure he drilled the correct one, and to answer any last-minute questions. 

Then the anesthesiologist came into the room to talk me through the general anesthesia. I told her I'd had general once before for a completely different issue and had been sick and felt generally awful for a day afterwards. She told me she'd give me a cocktail of anti-nausea medication that should avert that outcome this time around.

Then it was time. They had already started giving me some very nice sedatives through my IV, so as I said goodbye to my wife, I evidently told her she was "a good American" quite a few times (I have a vague memory of this). I was wheeled into the operating room. I remember entering the room, feeling very cold, seeing my surgeon scrubbing up, and transferring myself from the gurney to the operating table. The next thing I remember is sitting in a chair in the recovery room and having a completely normal conversation with one of the nurses while she gave me apple juice and some cookies. I was fully dressed but, embarrassingly, have no recollection of how I came to be so.

The whole procedure had taken just about 30 minutes. I felt absolutely no pain and had no nausea or sickness whatsoever. Within 20 minutes of being woken up, I was transferred to the car and was on my way home. I felt so good that I asked my wife if we could stop for breakfast somewhere. But because I was still calling her "a good American" throughout the car ride home (I have no memory of this), she wisely decided that heading straight home was a better course of action. 

My first hip surgery was behind me, and now it was onto recovery.