The girdle offered me a pregnancy lesson
It’s white. It’s stretchy. And it ts snugly around your middle. Really snugly.
The cool thing about regaining consciousness is how sudden it can be.
One minute you’re getting to know what it’s like to be wheeled down the hall on a stretcher. It’s exactly the same view shown in all the TV shows set in hospitals. The lights of the ceiling zipping by.
The next minute you’re in the operating room, arms spreadeagled and an IV plugged into the back of your left hand as the nurse reaches for the gas mask thingie.
“I’m going to give you some oxygen. Just breathe in deeply through your nose and out through your mouth and…”
About two hours later, awake.
INTRODUCING THE BINDER
That’s my memory of what happens during and after the repair of a blown belly button caused by spinning your five-year-old granddaughter in a circle and hoisting her onto a swing.
A half-a-small-marble-sized hernia is what I ended up with. The joys of being 66.
Post-op, I popped awake hungry and thirsty. The cup of water didn’t last long. The crackers were quickly an endangered species.
And then there was the girdle. It’s white. It’s a foot wide. It’s stretchy. And the Velcro means it fits snugly around your middle. Really snugly. The better to keep everything in order after it’s been tucked and stitched back into place.
The doctor called it a “binder.” All I know is once I’d refilled my tank with water, the pressure that thing was putting on my insides meant…
I tried to explain it to Beautiful Wife.
“I feel like I have to pee every 10 minutes.”
She gave me The Look. "Now you know how I felt when I was pregnant,” she said without a trace of sympathy.
LEVERING OFF THE COUCH
To be fair, I should have known. But it has been decades. Pregnant Beautiful Wife would grab at the side of the couch and try to lever herself to a sitting position as I smirked at the performance (then I’d go over to help).
“You don’t know what I’m going through,” she’d say. I’d bite my lip, each time thinking the same thing.
“How can I not know? You tell me every day?”
A well-honed sense of selfpreservation, however, prevented me from saying that out loud.
My effort to get off the couch and lumber down the hall to answer the call was complicated by the girdle, I mean binder. Turns out getting up uses lots of muscles in the same area as your belly button. And mine wasn’t having it. Ouch.
So grabbing at the back of the couch with my left hand, dropping my right leg towards the floor, then pulling and pushing – really doing anything that didn’t involve my abdomen – I levered myself to my feet.
BW sat and smirked. No way was I reaching out for a helping hand.
DREAMS OF CYCLING
Nearly two weeks later now and … the girdle is gone. All of the bandages except the bits of tape the doctor said to leave alone are gone too.
“Let them fall off on their own,” was his advice.
Some soreness remains. But I’m counting down the days, weeks actually, until I can get back on the bike and enjoy what passes for spring in this part of the country.
My usual riding partner sent me a video the other day. A little something to cheer me up. It was a few seconds long.
“Part way through an 84-kilometre ride on this sunny Sunday afternoon. You’d love it. Get well soon.”
With friends like that …
FREAKING OUT THE NURSE
And my blood pressure? It of the 185-85, how-to-freak-out-the-preop-nurse variety?
The day of my surgery, the nurse responsible for checking mine went about her business with well-practised efficiency. I knew what was coming. It was 200 over 90-something.
Clearly, this nurse was made of sterner stuff than the poor one who’d blurted out “YOU HAVE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE” - at just that volume - a few days earlier. The same one who suggested I rehearse my yoga chants for a few minutes. Yoga chants.
This day surgery nurse played it cool.
“We’ll check it again in a few minutes.”
A few minutes later it came in at 176 over something.
“That’ll be fine,” she said. “We see a lot of that around here.”
Post-op, she checked it one last time before releasing me – 13561.