(Part 2)...

OK, here’s the promised other story:

We arrived at the surgery center 15 minutes early-9am.

After doing all the FUN (ha!) surgery prep, we were told to sit tight & wait.

(Have you ever laid on a hospital bed when you’re not really sick?)

As the time for surgery crept nearer, Dave & I began to get the sense things weren’t going quite as planned.

About a ½ hour before it was scheduled, the doctor came in & confirmed our suspicions. Yeah, things were running behind. Seems the anesthesiologist was double booked!

I decided I had had enough of looking at the sea-green curtain, & listening to the tick-tock of the black, white & red clock on the wall.

So, I dug out my book I had brought along for just such an eventuality.

But, it was not to be.

No.

Because of “Erica” in the partition next to me.

I tell you, by the time I was wheeled into surgery, I knew that:

~Her birthdate was July XX, 1938. (said at least 10-15 times)
~Her potassium levels were 5.1, which was a bit higher than the doctors were comfortable with
~She had at least 25 pins in her right leg.
~She was in the hospital to put a new shunt in for kidney dialysis.
~She was tempted to go to back to Mexico to get a kidney! (I kid you not! When Dave & I heard that, we really started to laugh, especially as we overheard the doctor try to convince her that PROBABLY wasn’t the best of ideas!)

Why are these people soooo loud, too?

I had not had my daily dose of caffeine either,

so I could barely tolerate life by now.

When a new nurse would show up to talk with this lady,

I would whisper her birthdate to answer the nurse’s question. That’s how many times these conversations were repeated!


FINALLY, at 1pm, they found me another anesthesiologist.

PUT me OUT of my caffeine headache misery, please!!!!

The surgery went well, & I was in & out of recovery in less than two hours.

Back to the sea-foam partitions to wait for discharge…..

And guess who showed up about ten minutes after I got back…..

Yep.

Erica……my friend from before surgery.

She seemed to have survived her surgery ok, but she couldn’t quite grasp the fact that she needed to use the bathroom before they would let her go home.

Poor lady! I really did feel for her.

Hopefully, everything worked out well for her to start dialysis.

Thanks, everyone for your prayers, & right now, I have still not started to talk yet.

I’ll probably wait until tomorrow.

If you wanted to pray, my asthma seems to REALLY be acting up, so I have been coughing & trying to decide if I am getting a sinus infection.

Coughing can’t be good for a trachea that has just had laser surgery.