I left the end of my previous update with a cliff-hanger: me in the path of hurricane Gustav. I probably should have sent out another update following that so you all knew I was alright. In lieu of that, I’ll mention it now.

I’ve never been through a hurricane before, so the novelty of evacuating to a warehouse on base mostly outweighed the extreme crappiness of the situation. With my broken leg, I ended up staying in the roped-off medical area. For sanitary reasons, medical was placed on the opposite end of the warehouse from the porta potties. This meant that every time I had to take a pee, I had to take a ten minute hobble all the way over to the other end of the building.

The hurricane itself never really got too bad. We didn’t get the worst of it, and even before it made landfall west of New Orleans, the weather reports mentioned how it had weakened to a category two. We were in the warehouse for about twenty-four hours, and I managed to snag a cot near a power outlet so I was thoroughly entertained throughout the ordeal.

Of course it set back everything else. I was scheduled for lab work on Tuesday and surgery on Wednesday, but the air force base (where I was going to have the surgery done) had been evacuated completely, and nobody was in the clinic on Tuesday. I finally got a hold of someone on Wednesday to reschedule my appointment. They told me the earliest they could get me in was Monday or Tuesday of next week. Great. I settled in for another week of waiting for something to happen.

Fortunately they called back in an hour and said that many of the people who were scheduled for surgery on Thursday hadn’t returned from being evacuated yet. Since I was in the area, they wanted to bump me up in the queue and get me done Thursday morning. Finally, here’s that something going right.

The only surgery I had prior to this was getting a wisdom tooth removed. (Yes, only one. I didn’t have the other three.) It was pretty straightforward, and I was hoping that this surgery, though more complex, would be the same way. More specifically, I was hoping to not remember any of it.

The process of getting prepped for surgery was very interesting. The lady administering the IV remarked how deep my veins were, and I told her how much trouble everyone has drawing blood from me. She got the IV the first time, but failed drawing blood twice, so handed it off to another nurse. He failed the first time, but managed to get it the second time (thereby preventing him from needing to go and find a third person, since each nurse was only allowed to try twice), and got the blood for the lab tests.

I was asked about ten times what I was having done, not for the doctors’ benefit (it was in my chart, obviously) but to make sure that everyone was expecting the same thing. The surgeons signed the leg they were going to work on as an additional precaution, even though the one mentioned that it was probably unlikely they’d make a mistake seeing as how I was wearing a gigantic splint over the injury.

The anesthesiologist explained that they could do the anesthesia two different ways: they could administer a local anesthetic via the spine that would only numb the leg, then drug me so I was semi-conscious. Or they could put me out completely.

I was momentarily bemused. “You mean I get to choose?”

“Yep.”

“Uh, well I want to be completely out.”

This was the right answer, apparently, as she laughed and said, “yeah, that’s what 99% of the young men your age say.”

That snippet of conversation is just about the last thing I remember. The anesthetic evidently works somewhat like the red flashy things in the “Men in Black” movies: it’s retroactive for a few minutes before they actually give it to you. I don’t remember getting wheeled into the OR, although I have a brief memory of the nitrous oxide mask slipping halfway off my nose for a few moments, then hearing them say, “Oh! This needs to be on…” and fitting it back over my face. Then I woke up a few moments (hours) later in a hospital room, very sleepy. My first thought was a pleased, “Great! It’s done and I don’t remember a thing.” I was discharged from the hospital shortly after.

I hate to keep harping on this, but it’s ridiculous enough that I feel like I need to mention it. Going home from the hospital required me to be picked up by the duty drivers again. There were two of them this time. (I never did find out why. The one refused to talk to me—literally. Every time I tried to say something to him, he would nod towards the other one as an indication that I was supposed to be talking to that guy instead.)

They continue to be the least helpful, most apathetic people I’ve ever met. I think it would be comical if it weren’t for real—like something out of a Woody Allen movie where two tough guys stand around and laugh while the bespectacled loser makes an idiot of himself on crutches. It’s not just that they don’t help with doing anything more than actually driving the van (neither one even opened the side door of the van for me), but they go out of their way to to sigh and roll their eyes and belittle me any time I ask for anything more than being driven from point A to point B. I pretty much don’t even want to talk to them anymore because they just make me feel like shit.

I never did find out exactly what hardware was installed because I was sent home pretty soon after the operation. I intend to ask at my follow up appointment this Friday, so hopefully I’ll know for the next update. That’s also when I’ll be fitted for the permanent cast. I need another week in a splint to let the post-surgical swelling go down, but the biggest part of it is over.

At this point there’s good news and bad news. Bad news first.

My leg hurts ten times more now than it did before surgery. Between the stitches and the hardware, it’s a combination of incredibly deep, dull pain and—when I try to move it—very sharp splinters of pain, reminiscent of what it felt like to move the leg right after it was broken. I’ve been popping painkillers almost ceaselessly. I tried skipping a dose, but the pain is almost unbearable. I know the surgery is better for the long term, but right now it’s really tough. I can’t concentrate on anything through the pain—I couldn’t even watch a two hour movie the whole way through—and this letter took pretty much all weekend to write.

The good news:

With the major surgery done, I feel like I finally have “permission” to heal. It was the big thing I’ve been waiting for over the past two and a half weeks, so now that I’ve got it, I can move on to the next big thing which, for me, is having the cast come off and starting physical therapy. The Navy certainly took their good old sweet time getting me this far, so hopefully that won’t have any long-term repercussions.

-Ted