Nope! Thanks to modern medical science I am 2 mm taller, thanks to a plastic thingie they stuck in me.
Oh, and it's held on with a metal plate and metal screws they screwed into my bare, bleeding vertebrae that they cut all the meat and skin and tendons and things loose from, and then they grabbed all the meat and skin and tendons together and looped it back with wires through my fat. Fact. There are surgical wire holes in my neck flub, which finally seems to have found a brief but important purpose to exist. Hooray neck flub!
But like even my carotid sinuses and other important shit in your neck. They flooped it over to one side in a bunch and sewed it to random places in my vital bodily flub so they could root around in my spine.
Oh and my trachea and esophogus too. Yup. Just schlorped it all over to the other side and wired it to my other neck flub that I have.
What I am trying to say is that I know nothing about what actually happened to me during surgery and I'm just going by what the aftermath feels like, because there have been numerous sensations, and various holes. Oh and the entry scar, which they lovingly matched to one of my neck wrinkles.
Oh! When they woke me up, I remember that!
I had a tube in my neck. They didn't sew up the hole. It was just there, and the nurse was pointing it out to me in a mirror.
Why were we standing in front of a mirror?
That was when she pulled the surgical drain tube out, which felt really really strange, like swallowing a big piece of celery, only on the wrong side of my neck. Plus it made a sound.
It went 'shliiippblip'.
And a rather large vinyl hose full of really thick blood wandered past my field of vision, so, like, and it was MY really thick blood ooging around in that hose. Then OMGWTFBBQ here on the end of the hose came a rubber bladder full of all the gleeg that came out when they were using a literal surgical Dremel to go sticking foreign objects into my spinal canal.
There was a lot.
The nurse handed it to me for me to hold while she got the rest of the hose bunched together, and I stood there holding an intimately warm bag full of chunks and fluids. In my hand. It was mine.
She said 'Thanks' and gathered it and tossed it in the wastepaper basket.
That made a sound too.
And I stood there and I had a big hole in my neck and it was possibly full of the same gak. I was the only one who cared. The nurse briskly stuck a cotton ball on it and gave it a strip of tape.
Go home now! Farewell! Go be in a car! Bye bye!
So I left.
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I could barely get that ^^^ typed out! Not even for fun and games! It took me about an hour and a half. I felt weird the whole time. Like I was going to faint. It was a novel sensation, and so I persisted, and there ^^^ you have the result.
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I am phobic when it comes to medical shit, and I never know when I'm going to act it out or what I'll do. I can go to fifty doctors appointments, get shots, do whatever, and have no problem. On visit fifty one, I'll be shaking and crying and gibbering, my legs will give out, I'll faint, or whatever stupid thing. This is me! After therapy! And I'm told I'll have to live with it.
Anyway, I'm glad the Biker was there to keep me on track; and because he was there, I didn't do anything extreme or embarrassing.
That I know of.
Does that bother anyone else? I hate thinking about what kind of stupid thing I might do or say while under sedation - or what the staff is saying about me when I'm under - or the worst one, which is wondering 'Are they interrogating me for laughs?' (Because that really happened to me up at OHSU in 1979.)
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So I am a couple of mm taller.
My right leg no longer feels like it's being barbecued from the inside.
I can now use my left hand, which was impossible last week.
I can now sleep without using five pillows and an ice pack, which was impossible last week.
I can drive, which was impossible last week.
I can go up and down a flight of stairs.
I no longer hold my right arm four inches higher than my left.
The left side of my face is no longer all schnurled up like Long John Silver.
