Day 650 – The Surgery, Life Lessons Learned The Hard Way – Wisdom Unplugged

Wisdom-Trek

Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy Welcome to Day 650 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom The Surgery, Life Lessons Learned The Hard Way – Wisdom Unplugged Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is day 650 of our trek, and it is time for the 3rd installment of a special series of stories that will chronicle my recent accident and recovery as we trek “Life Lessons Learned the Hard Way.” This accident is a major life event that will change life for me for several months to come. In fact, I would say that it will certainly impact me for the remainder of my life. It is my hope and prayer that as I share that it will also positively impact your life. I have often said, we must accept and live life as it truly is, not as we wished it to be. We don’t always know or understand what will become of the uphill climbs and treacherous downhill slopes that we encounter on life’s trek. The key is to learn from these events and allow them to effectively become part of our living legacy which will positively impact our lives and the lives of all those who we impact. So for the next couple of Wisdom Nuggets episodes, we will look at... The Surgery - Life Lessons Learned the Hard Way First, for my faithful readers and regular listeners to my Wisdom-Trek Podcast and Journal, I want to apologize for the delay in episodes this past week. I will get caught up on all the days and get back on schedule as soon as feasible. If you would like to catch the first episode of this series, go to http://wisdom-trek.com/day-645. I ended Day-647, which was my story of the Emergency Room, with surgery being scheduled for the next day after a fitful night of sleep for both Paula and me. With my broken femur bone in my left leg, I could not really move in my bed easily. The nursing staff was in every hour to check vitals, monitor my pain, and then draw blood early in the morning for labs. We also had a roommate move in around 2 am, so between all of that, sleep was minimal. Poor Paula tried to get comfortable in the reclining chair in the room, but that was difficult at best. The hospital did provide a very good omelet breakfast, and we finished up a pre-surgery sponge bath before the family arrived that morning. Everyone was in good spirits and confident that there should not be any issues arise during the surgery. At about 11:15 am they came and got me to prep for surgery. There were two nurse technicians that took me to the OR wing and connected me to all of the equipment needed for surgery. The admitting doctor stopped by to make sure there were no questions. The surgeon popped in to check on me, and then they let the family into the room for a few minutes. We chatted and I said it would be great to get a nice long nap. Everything seemed to be running efficiently, and before too long the anesthesiologist walked in and said it was time to begin. I kissed Paula and said my goodbyes to the remainder of the family members as they headed to the waiting room. The sleepy medicine was put into my IV, and they wheeled me off to the Operating Room at about 11:45 am. Within about 20 feet of the hallway, I was out like a burnt out light bulb. The next recollection I had was waking up in the same room, and as I looked at the clock, it was only 12:20 and thought to myself, "Wow! That was quick." My next thought was, "So much for a long nap."Within a few minutes of waking up, they wheeled me back to my hospital room where the family was waiting. The first thing I asked them was if the surgery was really that quick. They assured me that at most it was about 20 minutes. During the surgery Marietta Memorial has a display board displaying the four steps of the surgery process and as each step is reached that symbol lit up on the board. It reminded them of the online order process for Domino’s Pizza where you can track the process...