Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Captain's Log, Day 43: Fun at the Doc's

          My sister Quill is getting her wisdom teeth out today.
          I would suggest that those are the teeth she needs to leave in, but I'm guessing she would punch me, so no wisdom jokes today. It's sooo tempting, though....
          I remember when I got mine out. Believe it or not, I actually had a lot of fun with that whole procedure. And cracked up my doc. Let me explain...I was bored out of my mind after the twenty-minute wait (for some reason, we had to get to the doctor's office really super early), so by the time I got up to go to the surgery room or whatever it's called, I'd lost all of my initial apprehensiveness and was now really curious about the whole thing.
          The first thing that happened was getting me hooked up to the heart monitor. That was rather interesting, and helped stave off the boredom for the next ten minutes as I kept trying (and for the most part, succeeding) to mess with the monitor by changing my heart rate. After I decided that I'd made the nurses nervous enough, I looked around the room for the surgical instruments, but there weren't any drills in evidence. I was a little disappointed. I went back to playing with the heart monitor.
          Then the doc came in--so far, he's probably been my favorite. He checked out all the equipment, then came over to get the IV thing ready. I have these really huge veins down the inside of my arms, so I assumed (correctly) that he would stick the needle in there. The doc got my arm ready, but paused before he stuck the needle in. Very calmly and reassuringly, he said, "Okay, you're going to feel a little prick, but it should go away after a moment. Just relax."
          I looked him straight in the eye, gestured at the vein and replied, "If you miss that, I'm going to start laughing."
          He stared at me for a moment before he began laughing himself. "Well, you're not nervous at all, are you?"
          I grinned. "Nope. Go ahead and stick me with that thing."
          He did so, still chuckling. For the record, he lied--I didn't feel a thing. Then he started turned to the machine that I guessed (again correctly) would knock me out. "This might feel a little cold, but if you could just count backwards from thirty for me, we'll see how far you get before you go under, how does that sound?"
          I chuckled. "Doc, I can't count backwards from thirty even when I'm not being sedated. How about if I count forwards instead?"
          Doc started laughing again. I began counting. Right about when I hit ten, I forgot which number I was on, so I asked him. He chuckled. "It doesn't matter now. That means you're about to pass out, so we're about ready to start."
          Next thing I remember, I was on the couch at home, halfway through Batman Begins. That was painless enough...
          One other highlight of this whole episode, at home before the surgery:
          Mom: "...okay, now the only thing we have to decide is how we want to anesthetize Radar, local or general..."
          Dad: "How about for three weeks?"
          Yeah, very funny Dad.

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