under the elephant

There are a couple of things you are advised to do before surgery. Go to the dentist. Remove the tail end remnants of toenail polish from the summer. Have your wedding ring cut off.
Of course that is only for those of us who can’t just slide it off. I’ve worn my wedding band for 31 years, despite being a widow for 8. Shall we just say that my finger and ring were one? A few years ago a psychic told me that my husband wanted me to keep my ring on. I laughed because it really wasn’t an issue, I couldn’t get it off! But the pre-surgery nurse told me to have a jeweler cut it as the surgeons may do well with flesh, but they are not so good with precious metals. So off we went to the jeweler who brought out his little tool (apparently they do this all the time) and told us it took only a second. Ten minutes later he was still grinding away. After I told him about the psychic, he began to address Jack. That worked. The ring is off, waiting to either be resized or made into a necklace, my finger left bare and hideously misshapen.
All these things were taken care of, and work continued, all the waiting and anticipation gathering until the night before finally arrived, where of course, there was the fast, beginning at midnight and even worse, the no water rule.
In the trick time has of slowing and speeding up, I finally found myself being rolled into the operating room. Why are operating rooms on TV always dark? This room was blindingly bright and I had a nurse attending me named Alla (pronounced Allah) and another tech named Angel. It seemed a fortuitous beginning. I asked if they were going to page Jesus as they pulled my arms out and strapped them onto what seemed to be a cross. They laughed and that is the last thing I remember from the surgery.
So it is good to make these preparations before surgery. I had good advice. Unfortunately, no one mentioned the elephant-- the one that was sitting on my chest when I woke up.
Later I asked my mom, who had a mastectomy 14 years ago, “Why didn’t you tell me about the pain?”
“Well, I didn’t want you to go into surgery with any apprehension,” she answered.
Good plan, I’m glad I didn’t know how painful it would be.
The nurses asked about my pain often, “on a scale of one to ten…” for some idiotic reason I kept choosing 6 or 7, when it was clearly a 12. My roommate (also a redhead, also a widow, also with breast cancer) kept telling her nurse, “I’m not in pain at all.” It reminded me of the roommate I had after delivering one of my kids, who kept telling everyone that her labor was only 45 minutes and didn’t hurt at all. I wanted to smack her. Why was I such a wimp? It turns out my roommate hadn’t had a double mastectomy.
And as she pointed out, it all evened out, she didn’t have pain, but I had flowers and the window.