My knee replacement surgery was on Tuesday afternoon. The surgery went very well, but I was throwing up most of the night because of probably a combination of anesthesia and Percocet. When I talk about my surgery, I tell everyone that I had the best care and “I never threw up alone,” just to be funny. Seriously, Kim and J were always there, even though I never called for them. They appeared, made things a bit better, and disappeared in that fuzzy time after surgery when you are not deeply asleep or fully awake. To me, their care and attention in that state felt like love and not just their jobs. I felt safe and watched over and a little less miserable by their presence.

I am nominating them because they were, in fact, a team, and when one arrived, the second was not far behind. The other special person I encountered that evening was the lady for a blood draw (and I don’t remember or know how to get her name), who balanced her knuckles against my skin and the point of the needle so I barely felt the needle puncture. Once again, it was easy to understand this kindness in the performance of her duties as love, and I was enveloped in a feeling of being well cared for. This is not to say that these are my only special care providers.

My day nurse, M, was exceptional. And a number of the hospital billing, discharge and admin members stopped by just to introduce themselves and put a face to a voice that I might encounter on the phone in the future. I can’t begin to thank my surgeon team, Dr. A and B, for the new possibilities that are open to me with my new and improved knee. My anesthesiology team made me comfortable about all the scary things that come with their processes, and the competence that they eluded allowed me to completely put my trust in them.

In spite of all the exceptional people I have listed, I nominated the night crew for that sense of love that filled me and made me feel like all was well and I was safe during a miserable time. I’m at a loss to articulate more clearly this feeling of love and being watched over and cared for while in the never-never land of anesthesia, but it made these ladies very dear to me. But it is the totality of all of these people who interacted with me during my brief stay at the Rawlins Memorial Hospital that allows me to say with confidence that should I face another surgery, Rawlins and Dr. A is where I will choose to be.