Friday 13th - Preparing for Take-off

It must have been about 9.30am when they wheeled me through to the final area before surgery. I remember looking at the clock and wanting to remember the time so that I could tell Mike and Mum, but it's a bit of a blur now. I was wheeled through to a very small room where two nurses got me ready. One of them was teaching the other one what to do, which was interesting in itself. They put the compression pumps around my legs. They are kind of blow up tubes which inflate and deflate to massage my legs while I'm in theatre. They felt quite nice and soothing. That part I liked. They also asked if I had had surgery before and when I told them it was my first time, they made a point of telling me exactly what would happen and when. That really helped me too. Even just before they put the oxygen mask on me, they warned me that it didn't have any small but it might smell a bit plastic-y but that's just the mask itself and perfectly normal. That kind of little attention to detail made a huge difference to my state of mind.

Then the technician put my thing in my arm for a drip. She put it in my forearm, which meant I could use my hand easily later on (to wipe my bottom, she said!). She gave me a little local for that and they also took some blood from me because I'd consented to being part of a study. So that was all OK and I was sitting up the whole time and chatting to them. They commented on how calm and relaxed I was about the whole thing. Perhaps I didn't need whatever it was that would make me feel 'happy about the world'. I told them that the very reason I WAS feeling calm was because I knew that those first drugs were coming! Don't back out on me now! Whether they gave them to me or not, I have no idea. They could have told me they had and I would have believed them. I do remember being told that there might be a little sting from a needle, but most people don't remember that. It's true - I remember the talking but not the needle.