PART I - Ready to meet my destiny in thigh-high stockings...

There  I stood, ready to meet my destiny.  Naked save for a pair of white, thigh-high stockings and a hospital jacket.  "Right this way Mr. Sapienza," says my pre-op nurse Toni.   Feeling like a cheap transvestite I make my way to the operating room...
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D-Day.   I wake up groggy from the 100mg of Gravol I took to help me sleep...it didn't work.  I had a horrible nervous sleep, wondering who will teach my son how to make perfectly al-dente pasta if I don't wake up...Who will make sure my daughter is a black belt by the age of 10...Who will tend to my tomato garden!

We get to the clinic at 6:45am - the big anxiety on this sunny morning is that I have not been able to buy the anti-embolic stockings that are required for surgery.  The surgeons last words at the pre-op appointment 3 weeks ago were "whatever you do, do not forget the stockings."   I was supposed to pick them up on Friday, but ran out of time.  Found out the next day that medical supply stores are closed on weekends.  Will the surgeon cancel my procedure because I forgot my pantyhose?

We check in and I am escorted to the locker room.  Like a high-school kid who forgot his homework I say to the nurse "I didn't have a chance to get my stockings."  She looks at me with that you-had-3-weeks-to-get-them-you-are-full-of-shit look on her face, and then opens a drawer full of packaged anti-embolic stockings.  WTF!?

I am standing in the changing booth, naked as a jaybird trying to put on the stockings.  For those of you who don't know, they are super-tight white nylon stockings that go right up to your ticklish parts.  They are held up with a tight elastic that cuts off all blood flow to your feet.   And the best part is that you have to wear them for 24 hours following the surgery...this is important later in the story.

I step into the operating room...very bright, very cold, and filled with young, cute nurses about to see me in all my glory...  "I am Samantha," says one, very tall and tanned nurse with an obvious South-American accent.  "Oh god, I forgot to trim Mr. Happy's nest" is all I can think to myself...  She turns me around like an expert tango dancer and opens my 'jacket' in the back...  "No peeking" I mutter nervously.

The anesthesiologist tells me to relax.  Easy for you to say buddy!  You're not the one sprawled out in the Jesus pose on a cold table, about to have your guts ripped into...naked and untrimmed at that!  Relax...ha!  Just then, he says - "Choose your dream Mr. Sapienza - I will be sedating you now and you will fall asl............

2 hours later - Sound...light...pain...ouch!  An angry camel kicked me in the chest?  I can't breathe...my chest hurts... I can't breathe...my jaw hurts... I can't breathe...I'm having a heart attack!  I made it through weight loss surgery only to die of a heart-attack on the recovery bed?  You have to be kidding me!  Nurse...nurse...nuuuuuurse!

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Luckily it was just a panic attack - nothing a little Ativan couldn't take care of.  I slept in the recovery room from 10am to 4pm in a drugged haze...Dilaudid, 10 times more powerful than morphine, was my best friend for the day.

At 4pm, the bartender, a sweet young lady named Nathalie, calls last call.  I order another round, but she says no.

• "Please?"
• "No."
• "Come oooooon..."
• "No."  
• "Just one more little shot?"
• "No."  

4 doses and I was already a junkie....

I get up from the bed slowly and do my best impression of Bambi on the ice rink...a new-born giraffe.  Two tiny nurses run over with sheer terror in their eyes and catch me before I fall flat on my face.  The put me in a lazyboy and tell me to wait for a while before trying to get up again.

PART II to follow shortly!