I took a friend in for some out-patient surgery. Her anesthesiologist told her that she was only going to have a sedative, like the one you get for a colonoscopy. In other words, it would not be general anesthesia. He explained that the difference. General anesthesia relaxes all the muscles, whereas the sedative just makes you sleepy. The good news is she asked to be extra-sleepy and he was totally down with that.
When I was finally allowed back to help my friend get dressed, hear her discharge instructions and get her in the wheelchair to go home, I could see that she was quite a bit loopy. She couldn’t remember everything the doctor had said. She couldn’t remember exactly why her tongue was like sandpaper. And she was uncertain of her discharge instructions.
All of which was fine, because that’s why I was there. I came as her ‘person.’ It’s pretty much standard that you bring your person to surgery with you. In fact, I highly recommend in all my seminars that you take someone with you to every serious doctor’s appointment, lawyer’s appointment, and financial advisor. Four ears are always better than two.
You absolutely must take a driver to the hospital with you when you are having any kind of sedative. You must. And yet…..
Our discharge nurse told us the tale of how some people try to pretend that their ‘person’ is coming, just not at the moment. I get that. We had to be at the hospital at 6:30 AM. Not many people want to get up in the dark to take someone to the hospital. Maybe you have a tag-team of players. You got your ‘early-riser’ and you got your ‘picker-upper.’ That’s fine. Just so long as someone is there to hear the instructions and take you home, get your meds and put you to bed.
But apparently, there is an underground of people who drive themselves, or get an Uber, or somehow show up alone. They give the intake nurse a fake phone number of their ‘picker-upper,’ and go in and get that surgery. regardless of how they are getting home.
Our nurse said she gets fake phone numbers, lies about family or friends coming, lies about where their car is when the wheelchair is at the door, lies about even where they are going to go after surgery.
If only there was a nose indicator.
She thinks that it’s because people may be private, or stubborn, or just that they don’t want to inconvenience anyone. I told her, I thought all of that is likely true.
But there’s also another possibility. Some people really don’t have a ‘person.’ They just don’t. So if you have a person. Or you can choose a person from column A or column B. Please do two things. Please don’t be dumb and go it alone…chose a person. You need them. You need them for information, for remembering and for your safety as well as for the safety of every single person trying to get home that day. Just be honest.
And two……….be ever so grateful you have a person. And maybe you can offer to be a person someday.
“You Just have to Laugh……and be a person.”
©2018 Cathy Sikorski
