There is something strange about surgery. You know the day is coming. It sits on the calendar for weeks. You talk about it, prepare for it, and think about it. Yet when the day finally arrives, it still feels oddly unreal.
That feeling lasted until I walked through the doors of the surgical center.
My dad and I entered the building and approached the intake desk. The reception area was quiet. There were no crowds and no line of patients waiting to check in. Just the intake clerk behind the desk, my dad beside me, and the awareness that after weeks of preparation, the day had finally arrived.
The questions began immediately.
“Name?”
I answered.
“Date of birth?”
I answered.
“And what procedure are you having today?”
“Ulnar nerve transposition.”
The questions themselves were routine, but the setting made them feel different. Every answer moved time forward. There would be no more consultations, no more discussions about options, and no rescheduling. The next step was surgery.
For months I had been dealing with numbness caused by irritation of the ulnar nerve where it passed through the inside of my elbow. Most people know this nerve because it is responsible for the sensation you feel when you hit your “funny bone.” In reality, there is nothing funny about it.
The numbness affected my left hand and the ring and pinky fingers and served as a constant reminder that something was wrong. My surgeon explained that the concern was not simply numbness.
If the compression continued, there was a risk of permanent nerve damage and loss of function in my hand. His plan was to free the nerve from the area where it was being compressed and reposition it in front of the elbow, moving it to a location where it would no longer be stretched and compressed during ordinary movement.
The explanation made sense. The actual surgery still sounded remarkable. Someone was going to cut into my arm, locate a nerve, move it, and then put everything back together again.
The actual procedure would take less than two hours, involve an operating room full of highly trained professionals, and require a level of trust that becomes much easier to appreciate when you are the one lying on the table.
The intake process took only a few minutes. When it was finished, a nurse appeared and led us through a series of doors into the pre-surgical area. The reception area had been quiet. The pre-surgical area was anything but.
The surgical center contained eight operating rooms, and the pace reflected it. Nurses moved quickly between patients. Monitors beeped. Doors opened and closed. Conversations overlapped as staff coordinated the steady flow of people moving through the system.
Some patients were waiting to go into surgery. Others were returning from it.
Patients sat in recliners throughout the recovery area, dressed in the same gowns and hairnets I would soon wear. Some sat quietly, waiting their turn, while others chatted softly with family members.
A few were just returning from their procedures, slowly emerging from the fog of anesthesia as nurses checked their vital signs and reviewed the instructions that would send them home. It struck me that I was watching both ends of the journey at the same time. One group was waiting while the other had already been through it.
As patients emerged from recovery, I couldn’t help but wonder what they were feeling. Relief? Discomfort? Lingering effects of anesthesia? It was impossible to know.
In a few hours, I would be one of them.
Until that moment, surgery had existed mostly as an appointment on a calendar. I had prepared for it and thought about it for weeks. Watching patients return from recovery changed that. The experience no longer felt distant. By the end of the afternoon, I would be making the same trip back through those doors.
A nurse handed me a folded gown. There is no dignified way to wear a surgical gown, and there is certainly no dignified way to wear a hairnet. After changing with a little assistance and adjusting my less-than-flattering attire, I settled and waited.
As I sat waiting, my mind drifted back to 1986, the last time I had surgery. I remembered the gas mask, being told to count backward, the odd smell, and the moment when everything gradually faded to black. Medicine has changed dramatically since then. There would be no gas this time.
A nurse entered carrying supplies.
“It’s time for the IV.”
Nobody looks forward to hearing those words.
As she prepared my arm, a memory surfaced immediately. The human brain stores the strangest details. I could not remember much about the surgery itself in 1986, but I remembered the burn—that brief sensation when medication enters a vein.
The IV slid into place. The sting was brief. So was the burn.
It was exactly as I remembered.
The nurse secured everything and left me to wait.
Waiting gives your mind too much freedom. You think about the procedure. You think about recovery. You think about everything that could go wrong, and then you deliberately try to think about something else. Fortunately, I didn’t have long to dwell on those thoughts. The door opened and a man stepped inside.
“Hi, I’m Peter.”
Peter was the anesthesiologist.
At that moment, Peter became one of the most important people I would meet that day.
He was calm, professional, and confident without being the least bit arrogant. His confidence seemed to come from years of experience rather than ego, and I found that reassuring. He explained the nerve block and how it would help control pain after surgery.
Unlike the anesthesia that would put me to sleep during the operation, the nerve block was designed to keep my arm numb long after the surgery was finished. To accomplish that, he would inject medication near the nerves that carry signals between the arm and the brain. The injection would be given just above my collarbone. Once the medication took effect, those nerve signals would be temporarily interrupted, preventing pain from reaching my brain.
At least that was my understanding of it.
The idea sounded simple enough. The reality was that someone was about to place a needle near a collection of important nerves in my neck and shoulder area.
Peter used an ultrasound to locate the precise spot. I watched the screen for a few moments, although I had no idea what I was looking at. The injection itself was not particularly painful. More than anything, it felt strange knowing that within a few minutes my arm would no longer feel like my arm.
The sensation slipped away in stages. My arm grew heavier with each passing minute until it felt foreign, like something attached to me rather than part of me. By the time Peter finished, the nerve block had already begun to do its work.
Not long afterward, the words finally came.
“We’re ready for you.”
The trip down the hallway felt different now that surgery waited at the end of it. Not long ago, I’d been walking under my own power. Now I was flat on a stretcher, watching ceiling tiles slide overhead one after another.
Before they wheeled me into the operating room, my surgeon appeared beside the stretcher.
We exchanged quick greetings, and then I asked him a question.
“How are you?”
Then I followed it with another.
“Are you ready?”
It sounded like casual conversation, but it wasn’t.
What I really meant was this: Are you focused today? Are you sharp? Are you bringing your best game? Because in a few minutes you are going to cut into my arm.
If he was surprised, he did not show it.
His answer came immediately.
“Yes. I’m ready.”
There was no hesitation in his voice.
Oddly enough, that was exactly what I needed to hear.
Inside the operating room, everything seemed brighter. Large lights hung overhead. Monitors glowed. Equipment surrounded me. People moved around the room with quick efficiency.
What surprised me was the music.
A song was playing somewhere in the room. I knew it immediately. The melody was familiar. The voice was familiar. The artist’s name, however, refused to come to me.
For a few minutes I tried to figure it out. It seems like an odd thing to focus on in an operating room, yet it remains one of the clearest details from that day. My attention never settled on the equipment, the monitors, or the bright lights overhead.
I remember trying to identify the song. I never figured it out. Then the nurses began preparing the sterile field, and my attention returned to the reason I was there.
Blue surgical drapes appeared around me, creating a barrier between the surgical site and everything else in the room. Soon one of the drapes was positioned above me, limiting my view. I heard a nurse mention cutting openings in the sterile drapes so the surgical team could access only the exact area where they would be working.
The surgical preparation came next. An antiseptic solution was poured and spread over my arm. I could not see exactly what they were doing, but I knew they were sterilizing the surgical site before making the incision.
As the antiseptic coated my arm, the reality of what was about to happen sank in. The surgeon held my arm, carefully positioning it and locating the precise spot where he would begin. Then something unexpected happened.
I felt something.
It was not pain, but pressure and touch, sensations clear enough to get my attention. “Hey, I feel that,” I said. The room paused for a beat. “I don’t think I should feel that.” More medication was added to the IV without delay. Its effect was immediate. One moment I was awake. The next, I was not.
There was no drifting, no countdown, no clear moment when consciousness disappeared. One moment, I was beneath blue surgical drapes, listening to the conversations around me.
The next, I was opening my eyes in recovery.
The clock read approximately 4:30 PM. More than three hours had disappeared. I blinked, looked around, and saw my dad sitting nearby. Then I looked down and saw my arm secured in a heavy sling.
A nurse arrived with graham crackers and water. After hours without food, the crackers disappeared quickly. The nurse checked on me regularly, and each time she asked the same question: how was the pain? So far, there was none. The nerve block was still holding strong. But lying still in recovery was one thing. The real challenge would begin when I had to move.
The staff wheeled in a transfer chair and suggested it was time to sit up. On the surface, it seemed like a simple request. Yet the anesthesia and nerve block had left me disconnected from my body. My limbs felt weighted down, and every movement lagged behind my intentions.
Two nurses were called in to help. They patiently assisted me into the chair and later helped me get dressed. Tasks that normally would have taken only a few minutes suddenly required extra hands and careful coordination.
One nurse explained that the nerve block could leave my arm numb for as long as forty-eight hours.
They kept returning to the same question about pain, and each time my answer stayed the same. I still had none.
Earlier that day, I had watched other patients come through recovery and wondered what they were feeling behind their tired expressions. Relief? Discomfort? Disorientation? A few hours later, I found myself moving through the same doors I had watched them cross. Before surgery, I had asked my surgeon a simple question:
“Are you ready?”
His answer came without hesitation.
“Yes.”
At the time, I needed to hear it.
Looking back, the surgeon had every reason to sound confident. The operation was finished, the nerve block was working, and I was awake and preparing to go home. Just a few hours earlier, I had arrived at the surgical center unsure of what the day would bring. Now Dad and I were making our way through the parking lot.
The surgery was over. The real challenge was only beginning: recovery.
Discover more from Wiley's Walk
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.