Seven Eggs, Anesthesia, Grilled Cheese

I am back home after a one o’clock egg retrieval, and already coherent enough to write! I think. You be the judge. Anyway, the good news is:

1) We got seven eggs, instead of the projected five.

2) Mike, while I was on the table, made the necessary “donation.” All systems, then, are go.

3) I did not, as feared, die on the aforementioned operating table.

4) Nor did I, as I warned Mike, my nurse, and the anesthesiologist that I might, exit my body and watch the entire proceedings from a corner, all the while cursing the surgeons for their flippant conversation.

For that matter, I didn’t even get to count backwards from ten. The anesthesiologist, a tall, intelligent-looking bald man named Bowl (“Like the Rose Bowl!” he said helpfully), came in, greeted me warmly, screwed something into my already-started IV drip, then smiled knowingly when I turned to him three seconds later and asked if he’d slipped me a Mickey. I think my following words were “hey, the ceiling is moving!” at which point I promptly lost consciousness.

I came to to find Mike sitting by my bed. According to him, my first words, (said extremely loudly), were: “HOW WAS THE PORN?”

He responded by putting a finger over his lips, laughing, and whispering “fine. Sssh.

“WHAT WAS THE PLOT?”

Another shushing.

“WAS IT GUYS OR GIRLS? DID YOU MAKE A DEPOSIT?”

I remember none of this. Mike told me later. According to him I asked each of these questions about five times.

What can I say? I’m very concerned about the whole porn/semen deposit thing. The first time Mike went to leave a sperm sample, he came home with something closely resembling PTSD. The movie he’d been given to watch he said, was so cheap and disturbing that it made him never want to have sex again. This, obviously, was disturbing to me. Plus, the people were unfriendly, and the room he’d been put in was clinical and cold, bedecked only with multiple signs begging that patients “Please Not Steal the Videos.” No wonder he was traumatized. Ever since, I’ve grown quite codependent with him on this count. Every time he has to make a deposit (or a “contribution,” or a “production,” or a “sample,” or a “basket of bounty” — the euphemisms are endless) I worry for him. Thus, the post-op concern. Voiced, it seems, a little too loudly. So sue me!

Nevertheless it was a good experience. Ceilings moved, deposits were made, and when we got home Mike made me one hell of a grilled cheese sandwich. Possibly the best one I have ever eaten. I texted my family and friends to tell them I was still alive (my pre-op text had concluded with an ominous “I love you!”). And now, under doctor’s orders, I surrender myself to a full day of Madmen reruns and the New Yorker Political issue.

The surgical life is all right. Maybe someday I’ll get to have my appendix out…