Blink Twice if you are okay

 So yes, Debby, the second operation was on Wednesday.

I am on the other side safely.

 

I would be holding a newspaper, but they aren't a thing any more around here.

Wednesday was, by all accounts, a beautiful day - I did wake with a slight niggle of a headache, but I thought little of it.  I had eaten my last food well before the midnight deadline, and was on water until 9am as it looked like I was a fairly late in the list.

Turns out, however, that the slight niggle of a headache was in fact the migraine fairy's gift, and by the time I thought "hmm, I should hit it with the good medicine" (as I now know from previous experience I am allowed to) it had amped up to the second cycle of migraine hell, whereby all within is evacuated.

By the time I got into the hospital, we were at the far end of this cycle, which means that the nurses could tell pretty soon that I was to be put in a dark corner to endure my misery without too much interruption.

Unfortunately, hospitals work on systems - and not all hospitals are equal.

The first eye operation occurred in a very old hospital in town - I have now had 3 operations in that one, and, while "very old" is the first expression that comes to mind, very organised and efficient can also be applied.

This operation is the second that I have had in the newer hospital - the other being the colonoscopy in 2020 linked above - and I don't know if my experience tainted by both being associated with migraines, but this go around was neither organised nor efficient - at least, not from the dark corner in which I lay moaning.

In their haste to get me through to this side of the waiting area, they failed to stash my personal belonging - that oversight required far more interaction than I could actually consciously navigate.

The other hospital has a nurse hand-off protocol to the pre-theatre room which has an extremely well-organised nurse's station.  This one had a row of chairs, a few beds and the nurse balancing files and pre-op requirements on a small desk.

They lost my file.  They failed to give me a shower cap (not so technical term for the keeping of hair out of ones eyes - or indeed theatre - when one's eye is to be operated on).  The man in the next bed droned on and on about his numerous surgeries at the hospital, casually throwing racist terminology about and using his deafness and age as an excuse for ignorance. 

The nurse was not the best at administering eye-drops - I mean, I may not have been the best at receiving eye-drops also, given the sheer effort to open my eyes at that point, but she was very short with my shortcomings in that regard and did nothing to up her own game.

Then they had a poor student nurse come around and check vitals and details - I advised the one vital I required - stat (I love medical terminology) - was an emesis bag (see, another medical term!) and the poor dear didn't have the time (or training) to pull the curtains closed before I used it.

The anaesthetic nurse then came down to see what was the go, and after a discussion with the Dr advised I could stay and have it or come another day - given the 100% rate of migraines for operations in this hospital, I figured have it I would - and she put some drugs in the dripline to help me through. 

There was a short comedy routine about finding something to put the drip bag onto - I thought that surely there must be something attached to the whizz bang hospital bed to use given ironing boards in the 1970s had already dealt with similar requirements - holding something high attached to the hot thing moving around on the horizontal surface - but finding such a thing was outside their scope.  When the orderly finally arrived to wheel me down to the corridor outside the next waiting area before theatre he proved my theory right.

I remember absolutely NOTHING about the operation.  

The usual sandwiches (one meat & pickles, one ham, tomato & cheese) and the cup of coffee for post recovery that they gave me (instant, white) were A-MA-ZING (after I removed the plastic cheese)!  I think there is extra chew in the crusts of hospital sandwiches or something.

I didn't really come out of the migraine stupor until about 8pm that night.

The general routine for my ophthalmologist is to do checkups the next day, and they have found a little bit of a pressure issue in the second eye, which, while it is not entirely unusual can be a concern when you have an added layer of WTF with your eyes, so that means closer monitoring - and the joy of some sulphur tablets for two days.

The side effects of sulphur tablets (besides, hopefully, fixing the pressure in the eye) is it is a diuretic (so more weeing), may make me feel nauseous, my food taste awful and possible headaches.

The good news is I can see distances without glasses!!  I still need something for reading, but was able to, for the first time in my life, go into the chemist and buy some cheapies from their stand.  They all looked ugly, so I bought the ugliest (and cheapest) pair that I could.