Well, it’s been a long day, starting at 4:00 a.m. to get into St. Francis Hospital by 5:30 for a 7:30 surgery with a driver who has bad night driving vision and a very scared guy facing his first surgery. Up through 7:00, when they told us to say our last goodbyes, I spent the day convincing him he’d make it just fine.
By 3:30, when the surgeon came to tell me he was in recovery and the surgery went fine, I knew everyone in the family waiting room by first name–as they came and left and I kept waiting. The system is that the surgeon calls one of two special phones in the room and asks for the patient’s loved one by first name to report in, as do the nurses to lay out the next steps which involve adding an extra hour at least to whatever the surgeon said would be the recovery time of an hour. Well by 5:30 and no sign of an awake spouse and no clue when he’d have the breathing tube removed or be awake, they finally let me into the recovery room to see him and bad wife that I am, I left after that, figuring that a twelve-hour stint was proof enough of my love.
Back home, however, several calls to the hospital started making me nervous since he was still out like a light and they were keeping him sedated until they felt they could safely remove the respirator. I hopped in the car and drove back out to Hartford. By the time I got there, he was safely in his room and while a bit goofy, very happy to see me.
It was a day with a happy ending–for us at least; one lovely older woman got some bad news on her husband and it broke my heart to watch her bravely accept the inevitable diagnosis. But the amazing thing was that there wasn’t much bonding in this rather large room with all these people spending hours together. Most of the folks had cellphones or some new little thingamajigs that attached to their ear while they sat there for all appearances to be talking to themselves. TV, a couple of PC’s hooked up to internet, and wireless (for my laptop) together with all the phones gave me the oddest feeling of being at a distance from the crowd as people talked to instruments to communicate all day.
And the surgeon? Never was within a few feet of my husband during the surgery. Yep, robotic. Amazing new world.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Best wishes for a speedy recovery for your spouse and I hope you’ll get some sleep soon!
Thanks for the good news. I’m glad things went well.
Prayers for his continued and steady recovery! And some downtime for the caregiver!
Thanks, all. It was a long day again yesterday, walking him up and down the halls and sympathizing with his breakfast, lunch, and dinner of clear liquids and the only solid they’ll give him, jello, which he’s hated since he was a child. With luck, I’ll have him home today and can exclusively cater to his needs. Fun time at the Gibb house.