Waking up from Surgery

Last time on AJ's Alien Within.... 

    I found myself being escorted into a sterile operating room with lots of official looking people scurrying around, cloaked & disguised behind their medical garb. I looked around and realized there was absolutely no way I could get past these people and escape. I reminded myself that I had signed up and volunteered for this adventure though. 

    I swallowed hard and let them help me up onto the operating table and was instructed to stretch my arms out onto the little "side tables" on either side of me. I closed my eyes anticipating the pinches from the IV's being inserted and tried to think of happy times in my life. I tried to fight back the fear, but before I could even focus on one good memory, I was swept into darkness and nothing. 

    My next clearest memory is a bit jumbled. My eyelids felt like two heavy doors made of cement that I couldn't muster to lift. I kept feeling the urge to vomit. Biting this feeling back, I fluttered my lids trying to take the scene in. I was surrounded by a large group of people working over me while I laid flat on my back. Their hands moved deftly and quickly, adjusting and removing things that I could not see. I couldn't find my words at first. Feeling slightly panicked, a kind woman's voice kept rubbing my arm and reassured me that all was ok. 
    
    Things were becoming clearer and more real but if I didn't know better, I would have guessed I was part of some weird alien abduction experiment. The sights, sounds and smells seemed so foreign and sterile that my brain was having problems processing it all and putting it into some recognizable form. 
That was probably the anesthesia though. 

    Finally, a voice came out of my throat that didn't even sound like mine. 
It was tiny and rough, like I'd been screaming for hours but I managed to finally string words together. I asked if someone could please just take all this stuff off me because I was overheated and was gonna start hurling if they didn't. I must have said it over and over because they started reassuring me that it was all normal. Someone kept rubbing my legs and I realized it wasn't a person but some kind of futuristic compression boots I'd been placed in. 

   Having no concept of time, I have the vaguest recollection of my family coming in to see me. They took a photo that I don't like to look at. I'm giving the thumbs up and look more unlike myself than I have ever looked in my life. I would have never authorized this photo, but since my brother was stuck 600 miles away, he wanted visual assurance that I was ok. 
( Note to self, I must insist to all involved that that photo is deleted )

Come back soon to AJ's Alien Within Blog. Next up I discuss my rather surprisingly short hospital stay after having bowel resection surgery.....