I arrived at the hospital a bit before 7:30 and 15 minutes later I was already "taken in":
A few moments later the good news came: I was to be the first to have the operation out of the 3 patients scheduled for that day. I decided to be original and celebrated the news by shaving my knee:
After that I was told to lie in my bed. Then a nurse came to me with two pills and told me: After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Oh, that's another story. This time both pills were white and the nurse told me to take them both 'cause there ain't no wonderland and the only hole will be the one in my shinbone.
At 9 a.m. I was taken to the "operating theatre". The head nurse spoke no English, but A LOT of Finnish (that I understood little of). The other nurses were laughing all the time because of what she was saying or about me not understanding anything or both. They somehow managed to give the feeling that everything was under controll and that was all I needed.
After painlessly receiving the spinal anesthetics I was happy to note that I will be able to see the display showing the arthroscopic images. It was very strange not to feel anything and at the same time see that the doctor (after a brief inspection of the meniscus and patella) was already cleaning the remains of my broken ACL.
To my surprise and disappointment I fell asleep and missed almost the entire procedure. I woke up just in time to see the graft pulled into position and the screw fixed into place. As the nurses were "closing" me the doctor told me that from his point of view "everything went fine" and that I "will go back to sports in 6 months". Just what I wanted to hear.
After getting sick from seeing how the nurses were moving my leg without me feeling a thing I was moved to the post-op area. There I thought for a second that I did not survive the operation, died and got to heaven. But then I realized that the angel speaking to me was actually a nurse asking me if I prefer English or Finnish. It did not matter much, since she was quite busy and I was quite sleepy.
It took about a couple of hours for me to get back the control of my right leg and I was happy to notice that the only pain I had was that caused from being parted from my angelic nurse.
Back in the room I (finally) had something to eat and then I started to let people know that the operation went fine and I am ok.
Although I was told I should be able to leave the hospital in the same night, I had to stay over. I had to prove that I can go home by showing to the nurse that I can walk with the crutches. After about 10 steps I started to get really dizzy and felt that if I don't lay down I will faint, so I "rushed" back to bed. The nurse said it was due to the heavy drugs I have been receiving throughout the day. I think it happened because it was the first time I was not using my hands while having a conversation in Finnish and my brain couldn't take it.
Overnight I learned that hospital beds are the best. Especially when you are on painkillers.
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