Yesterday, I had a ganglion cyst removed from my left wrist. The picture the Wikipedia article was the spitting image of mine a few months ago; mine grew quite a bit bigger.
The procedure wasn’t nearly as nerve wracking as my hernia operation last year. I’m happy to report I didn’t almost pass out in the surgery center this time. The only part that was slightly uncomfortable was getting the IV started.
Sandy came in to wait with me prior to actual procedure. She especially enjoyed talking to the anesthesiologist and telling him about her love of buttons. He proceeded to give her a tutorial on who use the manual bed positioning controls. Up and down I went for ten minutes as she perfected her new skills.
A few minutes later they wheeled me into the OR. Man, they weren’t kidding about it being cold in there. I was pretty happy to have them throw another blanket on me. They put an oxygen tube under my nose squirted something into my IV tube and that’s all I remember pre-op.
I remember I bit of the ride out of the OR into stage 1 recovery. I pried my eyes open to someone asking me how I felt. I said pretty good and that I’d like sleep more and giggled a bit. A few minutes later, they took off the oxygen and wheeled me into recovery stage 2.
I was pretty much awake at that point and eagerly awaiting some toast and diet coke (as I hadn’t had anything to eat since dinner the night prior.) I took it kinda slow, because they warned that anesthesia can still make your stomach a little wonky. A few bites and sips later I was reasonable sure I was OK.
With my arm still a little numb from the local anesthetic, I didn’t pay much attention to my new 10 day fashion accessory. They gave a prescription for some pain pills, but said I’d probably be better served keeping the hand elevated above my heart for the first few days and using ibuprofin if it flared up. That’s been working well enough for the first 24 hours so I’m gonna stick to that plan.
I didn’t think the cast was gonna be as big as it turned out to be. Didn’t take long for shoulder to start getting annoyed about keeping the weight of the cast up. It doesn’t really hurt much on its own, but when I do some finger exercise to keep things from getting stiff, I get some soreness in the area.
I think I’ll survive, but next Friday (when they take the cast off) probably won’t arrive a minute too soon. Typing single hand driving me nuts already.
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