It was a misty summer morning on July 19, 2019, when my surgery took place. My story starts with an early rise. I had to wake up at five in the morning to be able to make the seven o’clock surgery. I was like an early bird, always getting the smelly worm. The drive took around an hour and a half, and my parents took me. 

I arrived there with my brother’s old, cracked crutches and my new, slick metal knee brace that hadn’t been measured yet. When we arrived at the surgeon’s office, I couldn’t stop thinking about how the surgery could go wrong or how I was going to miss out with spending time with my friends over the last month of summer. I was not thinking about how hard the first steps were going to be, or how I wouldn’t be able to make it to the restroom for at least an hour of painful, painful walking. I was shivering from the room being too cold and the fear of what was going to happen later that day.

Once they announced for us to come back, my mother and I had to be the ones to chat with the secretary to make sure my paperwork was correct. They had messed up my paperwork. They informed us the left knee was going to have surgery, and my mother snapped, “No, that is not correct. It is the right knee that is being done.” After that, the lady just continued on with the rest, not thinking that they may have the wrong Lydia. Finally, my mother questioned about the last name on the file, and it turns out there was another Lydia that day for the same surgery on the other leg. Even now when I arrive at doctor appointments, the nurses have to be very careful not to mess up the appointments because the other Lydia and I have appointments on the same days every once in a while. The other Lydia and I are like two peas in the same green pod. At the time, I did not find it very frustrating because of how shakingly nervous I was and the fact that I was not fully attuned; however, now I do find it quite annoying that the doctor's office has not figured out their own system.

Next, I headed on back to the room I was staying in. Before that though, I first had to swallow five pills. The nurse informed me, “You can take all at once or you can take them one at a time. Here is the water.” It was one extra large blue pill, two medium-sized tan ones, and two tiny sandy pills. The large pill was as big as a rock, and I had to take several giant gulps of water to get it down. After that, they weighed me, and they measured my height. Finally, they had me in the last room until the surgery.

In the room I was staying, I took off all my clothes, and I put on the light blue hospital nightgowns. I pulled on one long tight compression sock, which was a bright snowy white color, over my left leg. After I climbed into the chilly bed, the nurses covered me up with the warm blanket and notified me I had to wait a little longer until the doctor would come in to talk with my parents and me. After what felt like an hour or two, the doctor came in and marked my right leg, which I still had five or six weeks after the surgery. “The nerve block nurses are going to block her ability to feel her right leg, and after they set up the IV and nerve block, she is going to go into the surgery room,” the doctor noted. 

Once the nerve block had set in, which felt very odd because it was numb and I could not feel it all, I was transported into the surgery room. While there, the nurses told me, “We are going to put the mask on you and all you have to do is breathe.” After they were done talking, it was deafeningly silent in the room while we waited for the doctor. 

When they put the mask on me, I remembered what my sister said. She told me, “For my surgery all I had to do was breathe in and out three times with the anesthesia.” Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. It took me four huge breathes of the anesthesia before I fell asleep.

The experience of having a surgery at my age has forever affected me, and it will always be present in my everyday life. Although the experience was hard, as Andrew Dykstra stated, “In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.”