When the alarm clock went off at 3:45am on the morning of my surgery, it didn't feel anything like Christmas morning!
Here it was: The Big Day. A surgeon, a team of anesthesiologists and a robot were going to try to heal me, and I woke up with a splitting headache. A very bad one, too. Great.
With my head pounding, I went into the bathroom and did the enema thing. I'll spare you too much detail in the visuals, but I will say that it did not help my head much (though my butt took it like a champ...). I then had to shower using antibacterial soap. We don't normally keep that stuff around, but we found some stinky hand soap in a pump bottle that would have to do.
The headache was buggin' the crap out of me. At this point I could not take anything for it, including water. I was getting pretty agitated. This is not starting off so well.
We piled into Stacey's car and headed out to Walnut Creek, which is about 25 minutes away in normal traffic. At 4:45 we were surprised that there was as much traffic as there was, but it was not a problem. We found the hospital, parked, and went to the surgery department. We found it strange that no one seemed to be anywhere at the hospital, but found where we needed to be, signed in and sat in the waiting room as Stacey rubbed my neck and shoulders.
Slowly, the hospital started to show signs of life. A person came to us and took us into a large room to prepare for the surgery. I took off all of my clothes, put on the hospital gown and laid down on a bed. A nurse approached and after confirming my name and what was being done to me, put barcoded wristbands on me. She then commenced to shaving my lower abdomen. I was wondering what and how much they were going to shave down there (mostly from the bellybutton down to the top of the pubes - I'm not a very hairy guy). I was a bit surprised she used an electric shaver, and I was very surprised that it tickled me to the point of laughing! Even through my awful headache!
After all of that, I became ground zero for anyone with a needle to stick into my arms. First, a male nurse came to draw blood. I've had a lot of blood drawn through all of this, and his hurt the worst. The dude just sort of slammed the needle into me and started draining my much in demand blood. Next, a very down-to-business nurse came to insert the IV. I've had plenty of those before, but this one really hurt. Stacey said the needle was shockingly large. That poor little port into my life systems was going to get a workout in the next couple of days.
From here on, my memories of what went down may be a little vague. I can't believe it was over a week ago!
The surgeon stopped by and was concerned about my headache. Maybe he thought I was stroking out or something, but no - I was just being me... I'm sure the combination of stress, fasting and dehydration were the evil bastards hurting my head so much. It was at this point Stacey confirmed what I had been saying ever since meeting the surgeon: He looks, speaks and has some of the same body movements as my ex-Game Theory bassist/madman - Gui !
I'm like, totally...doomed.
I was rolled into a hallway outside of the operating room. I believe it was here that I parted with Stacey (I don't remember if Jennifer was there). This was the moment I had been dreading and I was unsure as to how I would deal with it. I mean, it was possible that I would never see her again. I bucked up, shed some tears, kissed her, squeezed her hand and off I went.
I now realized my damned headache may have been a blessing in disguise. It was really hurting, but it also must have distracted me from the reality that I was now about to be put to sleep, and a surgeon and a robot were going to invade my insides and hopefully cure me of cancer without compromising my bladder control, ability to have boners, and perhaps most importantly of all - not giving me Accidental Clown Leg.
As I was rolled into the operating room, I requested to see the Da Vinci. I had seen pictures on the internet (there are also actual YouTube vids up of the machine in action, but I avoided those like the plague), but they really don't do it justice. It's larger than I thought and very sci-fi with spider-like movable arms. Good Lord! I also realized that the surgeon will be nowhere near me during the fancy part of the procedure. Once he pokes enough holes into me to get the instruments in me laproscopically, he will then return to the Da Vinci station and it is from there that he will hopefully use great skill and precision to chop this diseased crap out of me.
Before anything got underway, the surgeon stopped all of the action and talking and sharply announced: "Time out". This was another confirmation that the right guy was getting the right operation by the right people. We all confirmed, I was put to sleep, and the last thing I remember was an oxygen mask being put before my face.
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