The guest-blog that couldn’t be live.
8:20 AM. St. Mike’s has wifi, but it costs $10 per day and I am too cheap to pay that just for a cheap live blog thrill. So, this will be posted in one big chunk when I get home.
We got here just before 6AM and had to wait a few minutes until we were ushered into The Nice Waiting Room. We stayed there about ten minutes and then were taken to The Crappy Waiting room, which for some reason had a picture of JFK on the wall and six Kennedy rocking chairs. This would be kind of like going to Johns Hopkins and sitting in the Pierre Trudeau Rest Nook. Weird.
We left the Crappy Waiting Room after about ten minutes and were taken to a pre-op type of room where Diane had a gurney and a hospital gown (with slippers!) waiting for her. She laid around there for maybe 20 minutes until Nice Nurse came in to hook her up to a heart monitor and inserted an IV drip. Then, Nice Anesthesiologist showed up and gave her a spinal injection that numbed her from the waist down, as well as some procedure that zapped her nerves electronically so that they are now essentially asleep for the next 12 to 24 hours. He said there’s only a 1 in 10,000 chance that the nerve damage will be permanent. Life is a gamble at St. Mikes.
At about 7:55 Nice Old Man showed up and pretended that he was a doctor and would be with Diane in the operating room. I mean, the guy was nice and everything, but we all can tell a retired florist who volunteers at the hospital when we see one, and that was this guy. He proceeded to “look at her chart” and do other doctor-like things, and we just let him. Poor old guy.
So, a nurse and the Nice Old Man wheeled Diane off at about 8:00, and I am now back in the Nice Waiting Room writing this. There are maybe 25 people here. Diane is supposed to be out in about two and a half hours, and then spend an hour or two in recovery, so I am expecting that I will see her sometime around noon. We shall see.
10:40 AM. Nice Plump Volunteer Lady tells me Diane is in recovery, and will be there ’till about 12:30. Hooray. I buy a coffee and go back to Freecell.
12:20 PM. NPVL tells me Diane’s room will be in the Bond Wing, room 478, and that she’ll be there in 30 minutes or so. I go to her room and there is a guy there with a beard and half his face hidden by bandages, as this is the Resident Orthopedic and Plastic Surgery Hall. There are no obvious tributes to US Presidents here. Thankfully, Bearded Guy departs, leaving two empty beds and me. I decide to take on Spider Solitaire.
12:50 PM. There is an employee here who, every twenty minutes, comes up on the elevator, looks around, and then gets back on the elevator and vanishes. I will wind up seeing him do this three times.
1:30 PM. I remain alone.
2:40 PM. Diane arrives, on gurney and quite cheerful.
She says she is in zero pain, but the nurse (“Gunner” is his name. Heh.) says that when the pre-op stuff wears off, she will not be happy. She has a morphine drip that she can click any time she wants, and because she is not me and is from another planet, she only does this twice in the time I am there.
The big news is that they now say she is expected to be released tomorrow (Wednesday), not Thursday as originally predicted by the bone doc. I find this weird, as when she broke her ankle she was in the hospital for 5 days, and now, after having two guys (and one retired florist) cut her open, saw a 90-degree angle in her leg bone, tear out her ankle and replace it with metal leggos, she gets to go home in 24.
You never know.
More later.
Don