No, an OR Is Not My Natural Habitat - It Just Seems Like It

Tomorrow I'm having outpatient surgery to free up an ulnar nerve compression, right elbow.. 

We're due at the surgery center at 10:30 a.m. for an 11:30 "procedure."  Procedure seems to be a rather benign description for being put to sleep, draped, cut on and sewn back up, off-loaded on a gurney and put in a Quiet Room.  With an audience at all times, no less. 

Happily this surgery is projected to take around and hour and a half (with or without recovery room unknown at this point) so looking forward to lunch while I'm still awake will provide something of a distraction.  There are a number of restaurants nearby and Type of Cuisine Most Satisfactory Post-Surgery will engage me until the lights go out. 

Readers with better-than-average memory skills will remember that back in July, I planned my underwear for maximum shock value - I yanked up my traffic cone orange Victoria's Secret Cheekies (a version of underpants) and sallied forth.  Unfortunately the only person who ever saw my statement was the undressing-for-surgery nurse and she was greatly non-impressed.   Well, we know what we think if they can't take a joke, right? 

I'm told that I will be sent home with "a great big bandage" on my arm/elbow; cannot get it wet for three days until it's removed, presumably by the physical therapist I see on Friday.  The medical profession today is hell bent on getting you movin' and groovin' at the earliest possible moment.  Example:  for the hip replacement, I had to slide off of the gurney that had brought me from the OR to recovery and walk.  Had I been more sensate I undoubtedly would have protested. 

As I don't walk on my hands, am not concerned about this.  But walking using a cane in my left hand only with no help from the right may provide some rather dicey moments.  What the hell -  no worries until they happen.  That's what ORs are for, right?

Not a good idea:  Playing the Eagles "Hotel California" on the way to surgery ..."They gathered for the feast; they stabbed it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast"