I dislocated my shoulder while skiing three years ago (almost to the day). I never had surgery on the shoulder because I was cheap and I could live with it. It wasn't impacting my day to day life. This past August I tore my ACL. It immediately impacted my day to day life. I decided to operate on both, in the same insurance year, so that I could "buy one get one free" for surgeries and rehab. These experiences will likely dominate this blog for the foreseeable future.
Recently, I admitted to the world that I am a fainter who wets himself and then rubs his hands in his urine. It is a good thing I am already married, because a blog post like that (and a picture like the one at the bottom of this page) would never see the light of day otherwise. But it gets better. Apparently I am an embarassing ass when drugged.
When I am in a right state of mind, I think I am a pretty friendly and entertaining person. I put forth extra effort to be relaxed and of good humor when I'm around people that usually don't interact with a lot of happy people, like cops, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, door-to-door salesmen, and customer service reps who actually try to be helpful. So when my nurse is asking me questions to get to know me and do her job, I try to ask her some too. When my anesthesiologist says "I am going to give you a shot in your groin" I reply "oh gosh, I am very nervous about my groin in general" and he laughs. When the surgeon says "surgery went well" I say "you're welcome."
All of that sincere, genuine kindness? No good when I'm medicated.
I don't know if this will make sense unless you have experienced and then reflected on it, but when I was coming out of my induced sleep after surgery, I was awake before I was awake. I was saying and doing things I have no recollection of doing. At some point, next thing I know I am sitting up, actually awake, and people are laughing and talking to me, but in a sort of forced, maybe-not-totally comfortable way. Looking back I see they were laughing at me, of course. But at the time, I don't know it. I was all of a sudden awake and people were having a good time and I was just loose enough to roll with it.
So I got louder. I tried to get funnier. I playfully told my nurse I was going to give her a bad evaluation. I called another nurse by the wrong name, because that's hilarious too. After a couple of minutes of this, a nurse asks me what my job is and I say "I teach math."
"Oh, I bet you are one of the cool teachers, huh?"
"Definitely. The coolest. That's all I care about. I don't care if they are learning math at all, just as long as they think I am cool. In fact, I try to teach them how to be cool. Because coolness, that lasts forever."
"Oh yeah, how do you teach them to be cool?"
"Oh it's all about looks. Obviously. I mean as you are taking off my scrubs you can tell that I am super good looking, so I'm cool."
"Yeah, I need to dress cooler" one nurse says.
"No no no, you're fine."I turn to another nurse. I honestly can't remember if I complemented her or insulted her, but I think I landed on "you'd be cool if you had a different haircut."
These are a few of the things I remember saying. Apparently I said other things too. For example, Cara saw someone in the Operating Room she knew, so they stopped and chatted. As she tells it, their conversation went like this:
-exchange pleasantries-
Him (pointing to Wyatt): Is that your baby?
Cara: Yeah, this is Wyatt
Him (pointing to me in the bed): Is that yours too?
Cara: Yes, he's mine too.
Me, to no one in particular: I BELONG TO NO ONE!! <throws fist in the air>
According to my mom, who was there towards the end: When the nurse was taking off your scrubs and putting you in your clothes, you were very concerned. You kept saying things like "Should you be doing this in front of my wife? This isn't okay, it's very inappropriate." The nurse would say, "no, she's okay with it, she's right there." I would insist "she would not be okay with this, this isn't appropriate."
Apparently the nurse then made fun of my chest hair? "Chest fuzz" is the term my mom said the nurse used. Point of the story: I'm a catch.
Also according to Cara: She's on one side of the bed and I see her and reach out my hands to touch her face or something, but I am looking at her and grabbing at someplace far off to the left. Then, a moment later, she is on the other side of the bed. I ask "Who are you?" Cara still hasn't made it clear to me if I was being playful or if I was confused.
One of the nurses says "That's your wife!"
I look her up and down and proclaim "I can do better."
Now, you are fully aware that I am a faint-then-pee-then-stick-my-hand-in-my-pee kinda guy who looks like this and who apparently can't hold his pain meds the way mormons can't hold their liquor. I'd like to make this very clear to everyone: holy crap no I cannot do better. Cara and I got engaged 17 days after we started dating for a reason. I had to lock that down. I needed to get her married before she realized what a loser I am. Whenever someone asks me about my wife, like a coworker or someone who hasn't met her, I explain that she's a beautiful smart pharmacist who definitely married down. They tend to think I am being falsely modest (so they obviously don't know me well, false modesty is not my thing). Then one day they meet her. Later on I say "see, I wasn't kidding when I say she married down" and they politely agree.
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| Cara and Scout and I at Blue Pool |
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