Life in Kate-Land

So apparently when there’s a chance you might have chemo or a big surgery in your future, they want you to get your teeth checked out to be sure you’re not hiding a bacteria bomb that can go off when you’re recovering from being cut open or when your immune system is suppressed.

I knew about this ahead of time because when I got the scary radiology report that said ” >95% chance of malignancy,” I immediately came down with a nasty fevery cold for two days, so all I had to do was lie in bed and go to Google med school to look up worst case scenarios. When my mom came down before the biopsy she pressed the dentist issue and I made an appointment for Tuesday morning.

What this means is that less than 2 hours after getting the you-have-cancer call, I was in a dentist’s waiting room, filling out a medical update form and checking the cancer box for the first of what will be many times in my life, then bursting into totally uncharacteristic tears when answering the hygienist’s question of when this happened with “Oh, about an hour ago. GAAAAHHH.” (Not my proudest moment. I’m not a cryer.)

Flash forward to me here on Friday recovering from having a vigorous and somewhat tearful cleaning on Tuesday, my first two fillings in 10 years on Wednesday, and then my wisdom tooth out on Thursday, the latter of which I’d put off for at least a dozen years. So here’s how super glam I look today…

My experience with general anesthesia was a trip in itself. I think I fought it too hard and I think I watch too much dystopian sci-fi. Everyone was like “Oh it’s just a little nap and you wake up and it’s over!”

Nope.

Not in Kate-land.

Apparently I’m such a control freak that I was fighting to remain conscious the whole time and never really went out. I felt like I put on these goggles and suddenly sunk/fell backward into a super fast-moving black & white über-modern network of what I somehow knew were my neural pathways manifested as a techno-maze below a city or something, and I was zipping down and around and through the tunnels like I was in Tron. I could hear the sounds of the surgery but hugely amplified. It was like an overly-loud banging/sawing/cracking/drilling industrial-sounding movie soundtrack.

A comparison would be part Black Mirror, part Tron, with some Fritz Lang ala Metropolis thrown in there for good (read: terrifying) measure. Then it was over and I emerged and felt terrible and nauseous and delirious, and I somehow made it home and back to my couch, where I’ve been for the last 24 hours. I’m just changing gauze and ice and and eating vanilla ice cream whenever I have to take a pill. And trying to get some work done, which is a hoot on the Percocet. My work accounts are just lucky that I pre-write the posts.

This process is so strange.

But I’m glad I no longer have a “bacteria bomb” to worry about…right?