EPT
today, 4 days after my surgery I finally am beginning to feel normal again.
5 Hours of Success!
So what happened was that I was supposed to get a couple of small incisions in my ankle, but in the end they sliced it right open as there was a lot more damage than they had expected within in ankle joint, so they ended up cleaning up the entire joint, not just section of it (meaning that they scraped and reformed the cartilage where they could and micro drilled where I had a hole),
but the problem was that for most people, they could get right into the joint with some minor maneuvering, but not for mine.
My tendons were so tightly holding the joint together that they finally needed to open up the entire ankle joint and put in some clamps to get at the entire joint enough to do the work.
The surgeon said it was the first time he had seen someone with such tight joints, and even when they stretched the tendons to get at the joint, the clamps ended up popping off a couple of times because of the strength of the tendons.
Before I went under I told the surgeon, 'do whatever you can so I can play rugby again one time, if you need to graft it, do it, whatever it takes'. So from a 1 hour surgery it went to 5 hours.
Getting on to the operating table was cool, and there were two cute girl intern doctors there too (haha), but about 5 people, as I was getting gassed to go out, I took about 3 deep breaths, and don't remember anything else until I work up after the surgery was over.
No Morphine =(
I wasn't in a huge amount of pain, because my body was still pretty much knocked out, but I started to feel the pain and I asked for morphine, but my wife and my sister-in-law told the doctors not to give to me cause they thought I wasn't really in pain enough. They were actually laughing at me cause it was pretty obviously that I just wanted to have the morphine ^^ oh well. So I spent 3 days i the hospital for recovery, it was supposed to be a week, but the surgeon said that I was fine to go after the 2nd day, I think its because the pain killer drugs that I was on were enough and I didn't get a fever or any other complications so Thank God and so I got sent home in wheelchair which I'm now sitting in.
The first 36 hours were just really frustrating because it took about 10 hours after the surgery where I could take a piss and it wasn't until today where I totally feel normal inside, simply because the anesthesia basically paused all my internal systems, and I was dizzy, but most of all, I was so weak. I mean I could only focus for about 10 mins intently, then I'd be totally wiped out and would need to rest for about a hour before I could even begin to do anything. On the second day I go on the wheelchair and wheeled myself around the floor for about 10mins, and I was totally gassed out, like dizzy from the exhaustion. Even sitting up right after my surgery was near impossible to do.
I've had this feeling before, when I had a CT of my organs done as a major health check up, lots of radiation which basically knocked my energy levels down for about 2 months. But this was about 10 times worse that than. But of course, I know, I just finished surgery and was under for 5 hours, what did I expect? Thing was that I had some contracts due and I was just so knocked out, that on the day that I was to check out, I ended up gritting my teeth and finishing up a contract and sent it out, then got home took and nap and finished another contract and sent it out and passed out for 5 hours.
Reality Check
The things I came away from this are, fuck if I ever wanna go into surgery again for any reason, and I'm quitting smoking 100% as of today. Met some friends who flew into Korea to meet with me and ask me some business related stuff, they smoked 2 packs in front of me, I resisted the urge to smoke with them for 4 hours then felt my throat locking up from the second hand smoke, and by the time I had lost my resolve, luckily they had smoked all the cigarettes in front of them. I opted to just go home after that meeting (plus the fact that I'm on crutches and when you're 115kg, crutches is fucking hard work to move your body around), and I ended up getting blisters on my palms from the pressure of walking about 400 m on crutches.
Not Being me
I fucking hated this feeling of being unable to work, to focus and get something done. I think at the back of my mind, I've always thought, no matte what happens, if I focus and do, it will be done, and no matter how sick or drunk or fat or tired, I've always been able to press on, but fml, surgery, wow, totally something else- and this is all obvious, but until you experience it, and when you have such a macho rambo type mentality like me, I really couldn't ever see myself as an enfeebled person in any capacity. I'm the guy when I dream I'm fighting, and sometimes you feel as though you can't punch cause you're like in water or something, my intent is so much that I actually throw the punch while I'm sleeping (my wife thinks its cute when I do that cause she knows I'm dreaming about being in some big fight, but my punches are these arm flopping movements while I'm sleeping). But when I say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to hit this, I'm gonna do it or die trying.
But what about when you can't even lift a finger towards it, that the very thought of the action makes you so exhausted that you nearly pass out. Even when I had the CT, I still could power through it, drawing up some reserves,but then I'd be wiped out, but here, I was wiped out from the start. Quite the reality check. Always thought that I was fundamentally wolverine, mind you the fat happy human Korean version, but apparently this isn't the case.
Sometimes You Just Got to Experience it to Believe it
As my strength has rapidly come back at this point for me to write this post, I'm truly changed by the experience in having for the first time in my life to be completely without anything that I felt were things that would never let me down. My strength, my focus, just gone. I just never ever want to feel that way again,
I didn't experience anything about life and death, my surgery was very very minor one, not life threatening in the least, one of the best specialist surgeons for this condition in Korea, and I'm not feeling a afraid to be injured again and not go and play rugby, but rather, I never want to put myself in that position where instead of me going for surgery because of a non-life threatening surgery that it was for something more serious that would require many surgeries or being under for a longer period of time. Things that can be prevented by me fully not smoking any longer, or excessive drinking or not keeping my health in check. To live a life exhausted and weak all the time with only a glimmer of your peak performance available for minutes out of the day. It is hard to even begin to envision that, and that scared me shitless. Forget about not being able to provide for your family or whatever, to not to be the person you've defined yourself to be, like a run who can't run anymore. Selfish view point, I agree, but honest, and to have that reality check now in my late 30's is something I feel as a huge blessing because I'm not one to listen to others when it comes to macho aspect of my life.
You Fucking Cunt
My wife's cousin, is the head of a Chaebol subsidiarity in China, and about 2 years ago, we go out for drinks and his family is on leave from Shanghai and he's come back to visit Korea. As we're popping down some beers, he turns to me and says, 'I want you to listen to me, you cocky little fucker, take fucking care of your health you fucking cunt' and my wife and his sister just freeze, in Korean it sounded really bad, and while he is about 8 years my senior, if he was anyone except for my wife's first cousin, I would have knocked him out for using that language to me in Korea. At the time I just shrugged it off, that he was a bit drunk, he just wanted to drive the point home, but the language he used was pretty extreme, I wouldn't use that language unless I already decided that I was beat some guy like I didn't care if he woke up or not- like that extreme type of language. And I've never used that level of derogatory Korean, ever. But I actually get it now, after 2 years and I bring up his position because its like he really knew what type of mentality I was in, if I were to paraphrase it,
'look you cocky little prick, I know exactly how you feel, you think you're the best at want you do in business and you're good at it, but what allows you be as good as you are is your health. If your health is fucked then whatever business you can do, you won't be able to do, and you need to really fucking understand this now before you get fucked and fuck up everything,' but it came out the simple one line Korean way of '...you fucking cunt etc', but I still wouldn't have been able to understand it even if he had explained it to me in a more detailed way.
In any case, point finally taken, whatever happens at this point, I'll make the best of it. I get my stitched off on the 23rd, if I can I'll take a picture of the scar for fun and post it up, otherwise after the stitches are off, I'm in cast for 3 months, but in September 2013, I will play rugby again. ^^
