Day of the surgery

I got to the hospital at 7am, filled out the paperwork, and was called in by 7:45am. They had me put on a hospital gown and hair net, and wheeled me into the pre-op room. I spoke with my doctor before his other surgery that began at 8am, and then the anesthesiologist came in to describe everything on his end. I was getting a general anesthesia, which I had just learned the day before. Then there was almost an hour of waiting around in the pre-op room, repeatedly answering the all important questions ("on a scale of 1 to 10, how much pain are you in?", "when was the last time you had anything to eat or drink?", and "which wrist is it that we're doing the surgery on?"), and doing little things like going to the bathroom, starting an IV, and signing my life away. Around 9:20am they put something in the IV to sedate me, and wheeled me into the OR. In less than 5 minutes I could feel the effects. It was really surreal. The sedation combined with not having my glasses on made everything very hazy. They hooked up all my tubes and monitors, put an oxygen mask on me, I took a few breaths, and don't remember anything else. Next thing I know, I was waking up in post-op at 11:15am. They asked me to move my fingers, rate my pain again, and gave me some morphine in my IV. I was very alert and asking questions and felt great (my hand was numb for several hours). I think I was unconscious a total of about 1.5 hrs, with the surgery itself taking just over an hour. I lay around there for about 30-45 min eating ice chips (which have never tasted so good!). Then they took me to another room where I got to see my parents, and was upgraded to apple juice and saltines (which were nearly impossible to eat due to dry mouth/throat from being entubated and not having had anything to drink in over 12 hrs). They gave me some oral pain meds, and were about to send me home. All that remained was using the restroom, and getting dressed. I accomplished 1 of those 2 before I threw up. They said this was common from the anesthesia. So I collected myself for a few minutes, and they brought a wheelchair for me, and we left. I was home by about 2pm, and just lay around watching tv the rest of the day. I was still quite naseated, and threw up again around 8pm. So we paged the Dr and he prescribed me a different type of pain med, which wasn't quite as strong. It still made me kinda dizzy and unable to concentrate, but at least I wasn't sick to my stomach and could eat something.

Xray taken just after the surgery, while I was still unconscious: