I was in the doctor’s office, struggling to process the orthopedic surgeon’s declaration. 

“I need surgery?” I said. 

“Well, yes,” he said. “Without surgery, that fracture will give you problems for the rest of your life.” 

I mean, if you’re going to be dramatic about it. 

“I need surgery!” I texted my husband. 

“You’re shocked?” he asked. 

“You’re not?!” I typed back.  

“Not at all,” he said. 

I’d say he could have told me, but I had not been the greatest patient. 

The news of my surgery did nothing to enhance my compliance. 

“Should you be driving?” my husband asked as we traveled to the surgery center two days later. 

“There are people born with one arm who drive,” I said. “I bet there are people with no arms who drive.” 

Which was not the first ridiculous, Willie-type thing I’d said since breaking my arm. 

A few days before, reflecting on this, my second fall in as many years, I pointed out to my husband I’d worn the same sneakers for each stumble. 

“I think it’s the sneakers! They’re why I keep falling.” 

“OK, Willie,” he said. “Go buy new sneakers then.” 

Harrumph! I did go buy new sneakers. 

I mean, it’ll be a few more weeks before I can tie the laces myself. But I bought them. 

Despite our sojourn to the surgical center, I still hadn’t processed the need for surgery. The day before, a text from the pharmacy had me apoplectic. 

“Your hydrocodone is ready!” the text read. 

“The hell do I need a narcotic for?” I raged at my husband as he patiently explained I was likely to be in a fair amount of pain over the next few days. 

“I am not taking that,” I said, harrumphing my way down the hallway. 

I’ve been harrumphing a lot since I broke my arm. 

Arriving at the surgery center, my nurse handed me a hospital gown and slippers. 

“Everything off,” she said. 

Um, everything? Really? Am I having open heart surgery? Are we amputating? 

Then the anesthesia team arrived. They explained they’d give me a nerve block, making my arm completely numb. 

“And you’ll take a nice little nap,” they said. 

“Wait. What?!” I said. 

I didn’t want to take a nap. I wanted to be awake. How could I possibly control everything if I was asleep? 

My arm numb, I was injected with a medication to “help you relax.” 

Let’s get something straight. 

One, I don’t need to relax. I can relax on my own without your stupid medicine. 

And two, whatever you gave me hasn’t touched me because I’m not relaxed. At all. I feel exactly the same. 

The operating room staff unlocked the wheels of my stretcher. “Here we go!” they said. 

Then I was wheeled, in a stretcher, to the operating room. 

Wheeled in a stretcher. 

Was this that much of a production? 

I could have walked to the operating room, you know. Jogged. Skipped. Wheeled myself in a wheelchair. 

I couldn’t dance to the operating room; this I knew. I’d tried doing some of my Tracy Anderson dance cardio a few days before. 

One little kick-ball-chain jostled something in my cast. It was quite painful. 

But. I could have ridden a bike into the operating room, if someone held it still so I could mount it. 

I did not need the melodrama of a stretcher. 

Once in the operating room, the staff offered to assist me as I scooched onto the operative table. 

I mean, it’s not Everest. Even with my broken arm — as Pink Floyd might call it — comfortably numb, I can make a lateral move across flat surfaces without anyone having to call in the National Guard. 

An oxygen cannula was nestled into my nose — oxygen, really? Am I dying? — and the nurse anesthetist explained she was pushing sedation through the IV in my hand. 

Drowsy now, I stubbornly gazed at the light above me. I fidgeted. Blinked my heavy eyelids open. I talked. About what, I don’t know. I am not napping! I thought. I will stay awake!  

To paraphrase Bones in Star Trek II, wonderful stuff, that sedation. 

Because my next memory is of waking up in the holding bay where I started, my arm still vibing with Roger Waters, still casted, now in a sling. 

My arm would remain numb for 12 hours. 

It was awful. 

Later that night, I stood too quickly. My arm slid from the sling, dangling like a dead worm on a fishing hook. 

“Can you put it back in the sling?” I asked my husband. “I can’t touch it. It’s weirding me out.” 

He obliged, then suggested I take ibuprofen, to ease the pain when the nerve block inevitably wore off. 

“Oh my God!” I grumbled. “I have taken Tylenol, like, twice since I broke my arm. How can the surgery to fix it possibly hurt worse than the fracture? No. I don’t need Advil.” 

He brought me four pills anyway.  

“No!” I said. “I’m not taking four. I’ll take three.” 

“Fine,” my husband said. “But you’re going to bed. Now. I’ll wake you for the hydrocodone when I come up.” 

Which he did, despite my protests.  

Reluctant, I finally acquiesced. “But I’m only taking one,” I said. 

“Babe,” my saint of a husband said. “The dose is just one pill.” 

Later that night, I awoke to find my still-numb arm hovering above the pillow I’d tucked beneath it. 

It — it was looking at me.  

The chipped, purple nail polish dotting my curled-in fingers made my dead arm resemble the Sarlacc from Jedi, snaking toward me. 

I closed my eyes. 

This was going to be a long recovery.