Day One: Post-Surgery Reality Check

I woke up from surgery around 10 PM the night before, and the nurse came in to explain my new reality. I was on morphine post-surgery, and they gave me a morphine drip button so I could control how much I wanted. She showed me how to use it through broken English and sign language—and let me tell you, I was pretty much mashing the shit out of that button.

I could feel that warm wave of relief wash over me, which felt amazing. But then very quickly, the pain would start creeping back in. Every once in a while, the machine would start beeping, and someone would come in to press something and clear it. Finally, I asked why it sometimes made noise.

“It only releases every 10 minutes, and you’re asking for it earlier than that,” she explained through gestures and broken English. “So it beeps.”

Okay, every 10 minutes—that’s what I needed to focus on. So for the first several hours of day one, I mostly laid there watching the clock on the wall. I’d hit the button, wait, and focus on breathing through the next five minutes, then the next five minutes, until I could get to that next time marker and hit the button again. That’s how I spent those early hours—building up about 30-40 minutes of relief so I could fall back asleep for about an hour, then wake up and start the whole process over again.

That was my life: little bits of sleep when I could, little bits of pain relief as it came.