The Blog of mamapolo

      I am at the hospital, in the waiting room, working on a computer they surprisingly provide to visitors. Soon, we won't have to talk to each other at all.

      We reported to the registration desk this morning at 5:10 am, and at 6 am they took him up for pre-op interviews and blood sampling. They called us (his cousin offered her own room to us last evening because we live nearly 2 hours from the hospital in traffic and she lives 20 minutes away- she slept in the spare bedroom on the single bed) and then even more generously took a day off work to keep me company during the surgery. I didn't know how much I would appreciate that.

     The staff in the waiting room took contact info and phone numbers and gave us a round electronic device with a flashing red light to show it was operating (very similar to the ones they give you at Red Lobster when there's a waiting list for tables) and told us when it beeped to report to the staff desk for information.

     Anyone who has waited while a loved one is being operated on knows how the next few hours went - consciously confident that skilled and expert hands are working toward the loved one's good - subconsciously flinching every time someone in a white coat or wearing a name badge approaches the area of the room where you wait.

     Hospitals have a board in the waiting room now, just like the "Departures" and "Arrivals" flight boards in airports and they assign your loved one yet another number and post surgical progress - "In OR" - "Surgery has begun" - "Surgery completed", "In PACU (post-op)". Just like the ones in airports, though, they are not exactly accurate to the minute. My husband's assigned number did not appear on the board, although we scanned it obsessively as it changed almost constantly. The explanation of the notations on the board they give states: "If your patient's number has not appeared on the board three hours after surgery start-time, check with waiting room greeter for more information."

     When I finally tentatively approached the greeter, we learned that they had changed operating rooms and assigned him a new number. For the next hour the notation beside his number read "Surgery has begun."

     A few minutes after that discovery, the pager beeped loudly and red lights all around the edge lit up in sequence. The staff at the desk told us he had been taken directly to ICU (which was expected) and we should go to the waiting room on that floor and call the nurses' station for permission to enter.

     We followed instructions (and the yellow diamonds and then the red hearts pasted on the walls to provide further guidance to particular areas) and I called the nurses' station. They said he wasn't actually up from OR yet, they would call us.

      It was 1:40 when the nurse finally came out to escort us to his ICU room, where we found him unconscious, with a breathing tube down his throat (the last surgery left him with a painfully sore jaw due to the intubation), a drainage tube running from his side to relieve any accumulated fluids, an IV in his hand and various other wires and monitoring devices connected to his chest.

     They will keep him sedated and unconscious until tomorrow morning, when they will extract the tube if all is going well and wake him.

     Although it goes against every instinct I have, since he is unconscious, I will go home this evening, check on the Corgis, get some sleep and return early in the morning so I am there when he wakes.

     The doctors said that the surgery went well; they removed the upper third of the left lung lobe and implanted the radioactive seeds to prevent further migration of the cancer. They also removed some lymph nodes to determine if any of those have been invaded by the cancer. They believe, based on his pre-op pulmonary function tests, that he will do well.  

     I intended to tell the story of how he first took care of me - but I am tired and this is long. It's a story that deserves my full attention, and I will tell it another time, soon.

        Thank you for your prayers, and I ask that you continue faithfully to ask for my husband's safety and recovery.