Today I did the 55+ mile Williamsburg road race course. I hadn’t done the whole thing in a long time and it was a good way to spend the last day under my own power. It was a great day and the sun was out with very little wind. I should have topped off my water bottle since it was kind of hot. There were tons of other cyclists out, way more than I’ve ever seen out there — I saw probably 30 or so the whole trip. All were going the other direction and most I saw early on, probably doing the same loop in reverse, except that they started a lot earlier to avoid the heat. I was pretty wiped by the end — when I’ve done the loop before, I usually start to get tired about two hours in and today was no exception.
A lot of the roads farther out were really torn up and desperately needed repaving. It’s funny there is a huge transportation stalemate in the state legislature because of road funding. The urban representatives are facing off against the rural ones since the urban areas want more funding to help ease gridlock. The rural roads definitely need some help. I guess it doesn’t matter when you have a massive F-350 with 40 inch tires, but today I felt like I was being shaken apart in some places. The bike was skipping gears like mad and the water bottle cage was coming loose and rattling around. Anyhow, I made it back in about 3 hours, which wasn’t a record by any shot, but I’m glad I did it. Towards the end I could feel the soreness building up in my knee. Hopefully I will be able to ride again without knee issues in a few months.
Tomorrow I go in at 7 AM to the hospital for the surgery as long as I don’t get sick. You can’t have any breathing problems for the anesthesia. On Friday, a nurse from the hospital called me and asked a ton of questions that were probably related to the anesthesia. Curious, I did some research on the Internet and now I wish I hadn’t. It’s about as close to lethal injection as you can get. In some cases, it is — people die from it, but it seems it’s mainly due to airway obstructions more than allergic reactions. They put an IV into your arm (I always thought they made you breathe in some kind of gas). Apparently for awhile after the IV fluids enter your system you are still fully conscious, but you will forget most of what happened after you wake up following the surgery. Then you go into some kind of convulsive state where you have all kinds of uncontrolled movements and then you finally pass out completely. After reading this, I’m wondering if they make you wear a diaper, just in case. Just like lethal injection, they put some kind of muscle relaxant in there to make it easier to operate on you. If reading about this part was freaky enough, it gets worse.
Apparently, less than one percent of general anesthesia patients experience some kind of “awareness” during the operation when they are supposed to be unconscious, and a large number of those report feeling pain. From the sounds of it, awareness during surgery, especially when accompanied by pain, can have a lasting affect on people, even driving them to suicide! Since there is a muscle relaxant in the drug cocktail, the patient can’t tell anyone that they are awake and the surgery goes on, leaving them in pure pain and suffering. This is what they say about lethal injection, that the muscle relaxant keeps the patient from communicating that they are feeling any pain. Supposedly, there are recent methods to try to detect when a patient is awake, but it still happens. Hopefully I’ll be okay, but this really makes me apprehensive about tomorrow. They had better let me get on a scale so that they give me enough drugs to keep me from waking up.
All that aside, then there’s the recovery to deal with, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. In all likelihood, that will be much, much worse than the surgery.
Aside from that, I’ve got to try to finish up some stuff for school, but I don’t know if I will since I’ve been kind of unnerved about this whole deal over the past couple days. Yesterday after I left the office, I ran into a few old teammates, who are now going to be seniors. I hadn’t talked to any of them in awhile and it made me feel a little better. It sounds like everything is going well for them and our team is shaping up well for the fall Cross Country season. My coach said to stop in after the surgery to talk about the recovery, so I’ll probably do that after a week or so, whenever I get back to Williamsburg. I’m going to need as much guidance as I can get for the recovery process and slowly returning to activity. I don’t want to do too much too soon and screw up the healing process. I’m sure there will be good days and bad days, and most of the days in the next few weeks will be bad ones, but as I get better, the tide will begin to shift and things will get better. And then, like injuries I’ve had in the past, you wake up and realize that you’re all better and that, once again, all is well with the world. Right now, all I can think is that if I don’t go through this, it will be much worse for me down the road.
I feel like an astronaut strapped into a rocket about to be blasted into space. Hopefully I’ll be able to say everything went well this time tomorrow.
#1 by blessedbullet on August 17, 2008 - 4:09 pm
They should have told you not to eat anything for 12 – 18 hours before surgery so you don’t shit your pants, involuntarily vomit on the nice surgeon, etc.
My experience was they injected some drugs into my IV right before they rolled me into the surgery room and they made me really drowsy but I was still conscious. They then put a gas mask on me when I got in to the OR which knocked me out in a couple of seconds. When they put the mask on me, I remember them telling me to count down to 10 and I don’t remember getting past 5. That was the last thing I remember until I woke up in the recovery room.
I’m sure you’ll be fine. Pack your PSP or something because waiting around is worst part of it all.