On The Other Hand

I should have bought a tape recorder

I didn’t really realize how much I type every day until I couldn’t.

Home from the hospital and not nearly as loopy as expected

Procedure from my viewpoint:

1. Arrive and sign in
2. Get called back to an admitting room (one of several bays with curtains)
3. Change into gown, footies, and hair net, bagging clothes
4. Fill out or answer the same set of questions about five times
5. Name tag goes on left wrist, big magic marker “Yes” on right
6. IV started with saline and antibiotic
7. wait for unknown time, keeping busy by trying to find longest word I can make with the letters in phrase “Taking Herbs & Over-the-Counter Medications?” in poster on wall (tie at 14 letters: reverberations and recombinations)
8. walk to O.R., with nurse carrying IV bag
9. get positioned on tabled, wonder when they’ll start the sedation…
10. jump cut….I’m in the recovery room and my hand is bandaged
11. 45 minute wait with nothing to look at but a clock
12. walk back to admit room, where Amanda meets me with my bag o’ clothes
13. discharge instructions, prescription for Loritab, and wheelchair ride to the car

I was clearly given much less sedation than my past experience. I still remember everything since the moment I woke up, which is now over two hours ago. Discharge instructions were basically just “don’t use that hand until the doctor checks it out on the 12th and don’t drive on pain pills”. The local is wearing off (or has), so now it’s up to the Loritab to help me sleep. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Two hours sleep and time to head to the hospital

Sedative after-effects and pain killers should get me a fair amount of sleep later today.

Tomorrow morning I go, so tonight probably isn't going to be restful

I’ll probably be up all night doing all sorts of right handed things. Shaking hands with the dogs, flipping coins, and the like. No food or drink of any kind after midnight, though.

If I actually sleep, it’ll be more of a nap than a night’s sleep. Getting up at five and it’s 9:26 now, so I’ve already blown my shot at eight hours. I tend not to sleep before any sort of travel, as well. Infer what you will about what makes me anxious.

Oh yeah. I’m also an insomniac in the first place.

I’ll provide and update on the amount of sleep, if any, in the morning.

Another Lefty Dvorak Drawback (at least for Mac users)

The Left-handed Dvorak ‘q’ corresponds to the Qwerty ‘w’. Since my left hand “knows” to close windows with Cmd-W, I end up quitting apps when I only wanted to close a tab.