Everyone’s given a pretty good summary. I’ll add one thing: even after you feel fully alert, your brain may have trouble making new memories for the next 24-48 hours. This depends on exactly what drugs they give you, but many of them are amnesiac. So don’t make any new passwords or try to learn anything important for the rest of the day after surgery.
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So taking a taxi to a motel in a random city a few hours away, and taking a nap for a few hours way, you’re saying that’s NOT a good idea? It’s more fun than crashing on your own couch, that’s for sure. Versed, in all honesty, is kinda boring, unless you know how to work with it.
Mine is partial reattachment of the quad tendon to the kneecap. All external to the joint, fortunately. I’ve been told “locked brace for six weeks” which isn’t too different from the cautious, sports brace peg-legging I’ve been doing for a couple of months. Not sure yet if it’s general or lower body anesthesia.
The bitch is that I have a series of presentations I might have to reschedule simply because I can’t drive or have a driver available for.
My hospital has a thing that hooks up to the gown and can blow either cold or warm air on you, depending on your needs.
Repeat on TAKE THE DRUGS. You may not need them all, but you will need them the first few days.
Sounds like this should pretty much be a cake-walk. I don’t like the idea of intubation, but will live with it. Yeah, I’ll take the drugs. I’ve had pain pills before and didn’t like the after effect, but I’m not into prolonged pain, either. My son is an addict, so I tend to shy away from them.
I’m just the opposite. I wake up from anesthesia quickly, ready to go and chatty as hell. Basically the opposite of how I wake up from normal sleep. The first thing I remember upon waking from my outpatient shoulder surgery is the nurse saying “Whoa, there buddy! Quit trying to get out of that bed, you’re not even supposed to be awake yet!”. I also tend to be ravenously hungry and thirsty.
Oh, by the way, you will fall in love with the first nurse you see when you come out of it. Don’t be embarrassed, everyone does, and they are used to it.
Ah, yes. The drugs. You may want to be sure that the person driving you home hears the aftercare talk. Just in case.
I don’t know what they gave me when I had my wisdom teeth out. It didn’t make the pain to away, but it made me not care at all that it was there. They gave me the “now go home and immediately put ice on it” speech while my husband went to get the car, and they gave me a little card with full instructions on it.
I nodded cooperatively. I put the card in my pocket, nodded to myself the whole way home, and went to bed. By the time I found the card, it was way too late for icing to have any effect. Luckily, I didn’t have any major swelling or bleeding. I also didn’t swallow the packing swabs.
“…I thought you were driving, man!”
That seems like one of those things were local could work, but they would use general just to make it easier. It’ll keep the patient from moving around for an hour as well making sure they don’t flinch or freak out if they get squicked out.
As far as driving, I’m assuming this is your left knee, have you considered something like Lyft? I don’t know what it costs or if the cost is worth it based on what it would cost to reschedule.
My wife will be all over this, believe me. She’s already planning to browbeat office staff to fax the damn prescription to our pharmacy so it will be ready when we get there. It shouldn’t be necessary to do that, but the office staff there is hopeless.
Depending on the drugs used and the policy of the surgical center, they may not allow a Lyft.
This comes up a lot in the context of colonoscopies, where people are really annoyed that they can’t take a cab home when they’re done, but the reason for it is that it’s not just the ride you need help with. It’s having a person there with you for at least another hour (preferably more) after they release you to make sure you’re okay and safely inside your abode. The assumption is that your spouse or friend won’t just drop you off at the curb, but walk you inside your house, get a glass of water, shoot the shit for a few minutes, help you get comfy on the couch, and call 911 if you fall over or start bleeding from any orifices.
Why don’t they keep you in their little observation room long enough to make sure you’re really okay? Because time is money, and in the insurance company doesn’t pay them by the hour. They pay them by the procedure. It’s not profitable to tie up recovery beds that they could be putting new bodies into on the slight chance that your complication will show up 1 and a half hours after the procedure, rather than 1.
You have a good wife.
Check with the hospital first. The last time I had an outpatient procedure, they made it very clear that I could not leave alone by bus or taxi - I had to leave with a friend or family member, and that person had to be with me when I checked in.
I had an endoscopy which was offered either with a local anaesthetic for the throat, or a general anaesthetic (for which you had to arrange for someone to come with you to take you home). I went for the local, and I don’t recall for sure, but I don’t think I had to undress and wear a hospital gown, given the point of entry (there might have been something like a hairdresser’s gown). Not the most pleasurable experience of my life, but not as bad as I feared it might be, and all over within half an hour, complete with the doctor’s feedback and a printout of the report to my GP.
The one thing I do remember is that there was a rather agitated man waiting for his daughter to come round from the general anaesthetic, who was worried in case the nurses weren’t aware she might have problems with it because - as he put it - “She’s got a slight case of necrophilia”…
Could a cyst on the surface be dealt with by local anaesthetic? Isn’t that something the hospital explains when it sends you details of the appointment? I’d usually expect an information leaflet of some sort.
I fractured my elbow last spring and had to have a piece of chipped bone removed. I was having general anesthesia but the nurse asked me if I also wanted to have a nerve block for the arm. I told her that if that’s what the doctor thought was best, then sure. It was one of the strangest things I’ve experienced. For the rest of the day the arm was numb dead weight. I mean it was *hard *to lift it with my other hand. The ice pack kept falling out of the sling because the arm weighed it down so much.
If they do a nerve block of your leg, be very careful. It will be heavy and like it’s not there at the same time.
i think Joey P was talking about using Lyft to get to the presentations, not on surgery day.
Well, everything went very well and pretty much according to all your accounts. My BP was in good shape, so no pre-op sedative. Wheeled me in, hooked up the IV and I was out like a light. The surgeon says he got all of the cyst out, and that it had started to spread up my neck, so it was good that it was taken care of.
My only regret is that I didn’t fall in love with the nurse. Well, maybe a little, as she was quite the cutie. Thanks again for all the assistance.
Good to hear. Thanks for the update.
You don’t remember falling in love with the nurse.
StG