So I’m back from the hospital, sans uvula and with a killer sore throat, but otherwise feeling surprisingly OK… It wasn’t so bad in the end, despite the linguistic barriers and apparent disorganization of the Manhattan Eye & Ear Infirmary (and how come I had throat surgery in an eye and ear hospital?). I’d made myself a little apprehensive by finding a few horror stories on the web, e.g. this one and this one, but hopefully they are the exception, not the rule.

After struggling through the snow to get there for 6:30am, and answering exactly the same set of questions with different people in at least four different waiting rooms over the course of about 3 hours, I finally reached the operating theatre, was hooked up to a drip and was unconscious within seconds.

Next thing I know, I’m waking up from an unremembered dream in the post-op area at around 10:30am — I was probably out for less than an hour. And I woke up fast, too: Instantly wide awake, alert, aware of a very sore throat but able to talk and ask questions (this is a far cry from my last surgery under general anaesthetic, a septoplasty in the UK back in 1998, when it took me many hours to come up through various strata of anaesthetic semi-consciousness, and they kept me in overnight to keep an eye on me).

Today, though, I was drinking (albeit with some pain) a little beaker of iced apple juice straight after waking up, and was dressed almost immediately after that. Then it was just a matter of waiting for my friend Scyld to come and pick me up (cheers mate!) and heading back to Brooklyn in a cab for a weekend of movies and soup!