Of Presidents, Monkeys and Knees.

Hey, we’re back! 

It’s been quite a while since I last wrote one of these sandwiches I know. But, it’s been a pretty weird few months. 

First I went to Dallas on business. Great trip. The hotel overlooked Dealey Plaza and was within walking distance to a lot of great places to eat. Worth mentioning here are The Butcher Shop for the best hamburgers in town, the Y.O. Ranch for buffalo steaks and mesquite grilled baked potato and The Border for great Tex-Mex.

Anyway, as I said, it was a great trip. I did the usual morbid tourist stuff like visiting the grassy knoll and the Texas Schoolbook Repository. Then I got to meet with a couple of old buddies from “back in the day” and my good friend, Ed, got to hear the tale of Gator, Pete and the monkey as only Gator can tell it. Besides the food, drink and great company, I did get a lot accomplished business-wise as well. Then, on our last night there, having completed our business, Ed and I along with another colleague, Melinda, visited downtown Dallas’ only biker bar, Reno’s Chop Shop where we had a great time and drank until closing. 

Upon my return I got prepared for knee surgery.  

That was fun. 

I opted for a “regional block” anesthesia. This entails numbing the femoral nerve and the sciatic nerve thus deadening the leg from mid-thigh down. It allows for quicker recovery and is effective 95% of the time. 

Guess which percentage I fell in. 

Yep, after poking and prodding and electrocuting my femoral nerve for what seemed like hours, they gave up and decided to give me a spinal block instead. 

In a spinal block, the anesthesia is injected into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord in the lower part of your back. This numbs EVERYTHING from the waist down. And yes, I mean everything. I’ve actually had the procedure twice before during surgery on my other knee and was quite happy to do it again even though I knew there was a good chance that I could have the common “spinal headache” side effect. So, they poked and jabbed and jabbed and poked and decided that my back was not cooperating enough for the spinal block to be administered properly. 

Surprise! 

Now the anesthetist is pissed off. They slam me on my back and cover my nose and mouth with a mask producing some weird smelling gas and yell at me to breath. “Woo-hoo!” I scream. 

“Woo-hoo, my ass. Breath deeper!” 

Anyway, I wake up in the recovery room with about six people yelling my name and one of them telling someone, “Give him some oxygen. Maybe that’ll wake him up.” 

I finally get home so doped up from all the cocktails of drugs they gave me before the femoral block and the spinal block and the morphine that I don’t need any of the pain killers they gave me for the next two days.  

At least not for my knee. 

I ended up with a sore throat from the tube they jammed down there for the general anesthesia and as a bonus; I still got the spinal headache. 

So now I’m sitting here listening to Goldfrapp, slightly buzzed from the Percocets, enjoying a rare sunny day here in the UK, and trying to squeeze six months of barbecuing in before it starts raining again. 

Woo-hoo.

Remember, life is a sandwich. Eat it up!

Mike