I know you want to know

so, yes. The surgery was just fine. Less damage than we thought, so hopefully my right hand will be back and useful within a couple of weeks. I didn't actually tear the ligament, but things were not right in there, so my wonderful doctor cleaned it up through the three little button holes. Well, I think they look like buttonholes. That's what I read, that they would look like buttonholes. In fact, my arm is encased in a large white bandage, so I can't see what they actually look like.

Oh, suddenly the pain is beginning. Good thing I just took half of a pain pill. They prescribed 1 to 2 pain pills, but I thought I'd start out smaller. With the pain I'm starting to feel though, I may soon change my mind and dig right in.

Getting to the point of surgery was, as I expected, a fiasco. I arrived at 6:20 a.m., per my deductions from the convoluted conversations with the resident and admitting. I was early. I should have arrived at 7 a.m. Okay, so a bit early, but that's no problem, right? It turns out that the reason they did not call me to tell me the time is that they had not received my chart. They would have to wait until 7:30 or eight o'clock to get the chart. So I waited until 7:50 am, then asked the new woman at the deskif my chart had arrived. Of course not. She told me it would have to wait until 9 a.m., when the doctor's office opened. Since the surgery was supposed to be at 9:30 a.m., this could've been a problem. Fortunately, although everyone else had forgotten about me, my doctor had not. At about 8:45 a.m., he came out personally and said, "Why isn't she getting ready for her surgery?"so then they had to do something about me. I did all the paperwork that did not involve signatures and all of the talking to the anesthesiologist and all of the vital signs and all of the rate your pain and how it has affected your life and all of the changing into the skimpy hospital clothes and still my chart had not arrived, so the doctor did another surgery that was supposed to be after mine and in the meantime my chart arrived and I signed everything. The lovely doctor who doesn't forget about me initialed my hand in purple marker to make sure that he operated on the correct one, and I looked at his initials on my hand and suddenly wish that I had gone to medical school. I want to put my initials on people's hands. It's so cool. Actually the initials were earlier before my chart arrived, but after they finished the previous surgery, the hand surgeon who doesn't forget my surgery and the other doctor who I don't really know and I got into a discussion about whether Dumbledore is really dead and if he is whether he died to save Malfoy, and whether Snape killed him out of malice or if he is really still a good guy, and whether Dumbledore had to die so that Harry had to grow up. It's always good to know that you have the same interests as the people who are about to dig into your wrist.

Then I pretty much remember nothing because my first IV ever was pumping drugs into my arm. When I woke up, my arm looked like rubber because it was covered in Betadine, felt like rubber because it was numb from the shoulder down, and acted like rubber because I could not control it, so when I lifted it from my shoulder it flew up and hit me in the face. Trust me, I was pretty excited when I could finally move my fingers again and had a real hand back.

I am quite amused that I managed to have surgery despite the fact that no one but me and the doctor were planning on it. Story of my life. I feel like I have waited in a lot of waiting rooms with only my determination to ensure that the appointment I thought I had actually happened.

Maybe I am forgettable. No, impossible.

Okay, off to sleep off the Vicodin. The Africa story will have to wait. This voice recognition software is irritating me too much. Will it never learn?

Wrist pain. Need more Vicodin.