As some of you know, last Wednesday I underwent carpal tunnel surgery on my left wrist. My recovery has gone quite smoothly, and my pain is pretty minimal unless I’m not thinking and do something stupid like turn a doorknob. The surgery itself went very well, I’m still not used to anesthesia though and closing my eyes and waking up an hour later still unnerves me. This time though it totally discombobulated me from the passage of time. I was able to listen to music during my procedure and when I went under I was listening to a specific song. When I woke up afterward, you guessed it, the same song was playing again; given the fact that my brain was still loopy from the drugs I had a hard time realizing the procedure was over. Not even the reality that I was no longer in the operating room and back in recovery could make me believe my surgery, was in fact, done. The very patient post-op nurse finally had me look at my hand and upon seeing my mummified Oompa Loompa hand (thanks Betadine) did my brain de-fog enough for me to realize that it was in fact over. Lying there in recovery, I found myself thinking about how being unconscious whether during normal sleep or during surgery, we become detached from time itself. Minutes and hours become meaningless, we just exist in a stream of time where nameless moments pass without our knowing. These deep thoughts were soon replaced with the gnawing in my stomach reminding me that I hadn’t eaten in 12 hours. I ate something, they monitored me for a while longer and then sent me home to recuperate.