Yet Another Journal

Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans,
cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of.

Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net
. . . . .
. . . . .

» Sunday, September 15, 2024

Surgery Week

James had his fistula surgery this week, on the 10th.

The week itself did not start auspiciously; James Earl Jones died. "The Voice," and the talented man attached to it, is gone. End of an era indeed.

Monday evening we stuffed James with food at about 11:45, then valiantly tried to get 3 1/2 hours sleep. If was mostly fruitless, and we could have waited and gotten up at four anyway, as the freeway was totally clear and we got to the surgical center so early that the only people there were the security guards. So we parked and closed our eyes until the lights went on. We weren't the only people there early, either; there were about six other patients...well, patiently waiting.

James' surgery was scheduled for 7:30, but he had to be here for 5:30; I think we waited a bit longer than that. Finally they brought us back to a room and I helped him undress and waited under unforgiving fluorescent lights until they shooed me out. They would send me texts on James' condition, and I could also look on the electronic board. The café was open by then and I had something called "breakfast porridge," a bagel and cream cheese, and milk. I couldn't finish the porridge. I didn't mind the Cream of Wheat texture, but it was apparently pumpkin spice and virulently sweet.

Well, here my long wait began. I was so sleepy, but there was nowhere to sleep, I was too woozy to write or even to read. I finally perched myself on a sofa on the other side of the waiting area, which was lit brightly with obnoxious white lighting (I mean, I tried sitting everywhere, even in the children's waiting center, but it was too damn bright), and half dozed. I got a text at ten saying he was in recovery, and Dr. Coyle said if they started on time, James should be ready to go by 12:30.

Alas, no, because he had the same blood pressure problem as last time, and also felt like he couldn't breath when they turned the anesthesia off, so they put him on oxygen and then a Bi-Pap to help him get the anesthesia out of his system. Worse, the recovery room nurse kept trying to call me, but I wasn't getting her messages because my phone was tagging them as spam. So I kept calling her, which must have been annoying for her.

Didn't get to see James until 3:30 p.m., after which they'd turned both the oxygen and the Bi-Pap off.

Guess when we got released. Yes, you guessed it: rush hour. It took us over an hour to drive the 24 miles home.

Despite the delay, he seems to be doing fine. The doctor gave him some pain medication, but he only used it that evening and the next day. He did report some burning at the surgical site during his first dialysis after the surgery, but that was all.

After this, trips to dialysis and the rest of the week was a breeze. Put the flag up for September 11, then next day stripped all the summer crap down and put up fall stuff. Since I finally found the rub-on letters, I finished the signs for the porch, and now I just need to spray them with a clear coat. I also bought a cute stuffed sheep.

Labels: health, illness, surgery

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:57:00 PM

(0) COMMENTS

» Monday, August 28, 2023

The Surgery

Our day started at five a.m.

James' surgery was scheduled for nine, but we were supposed to be there by 7:30; we were there way earlier.

They have a nifty system: you get one of those "your table is ready" things that vibrates and blinks when you check in. It notifies you to admissions, then to pre-op, and then it's given to whomever accompanied the person having outpatient surgery, to call you back to see the person before they go into surgery. Following that, they have a board with color-coded stages of the surgery (admittance, pre-op, waiting, etc. all the way to "all done"), and you also get texts on the patient's progress in surgery and then in post-op.

So James did paperwork, then we waited, then he went back to pre-op, then I went back to pre-op, where he was all kitted up for surgery. The nurses, as always, were super-nice, and we met the anesthetist and then Dr. Austin came in to go over the surgery with us. And then I went back out into the foyer to wait. I got some milk and Doritos from the cafeteria and had brought fruit with me. (I tried to get a seat next to an electrical plug; there was only one, and when I did get that seat, the plug wasn't powered. So I depended on the laptop battery, wrote what I wanted to write, then went on to reading.) The text came that he was in surgery. The doctor said surgery would be 25 minutes to an hour, depending on what they found and also how long it took them to stop the bleeding (he didn't have to go off his blood thinners). Pretty much an hour later I got a text that he was out of surgery.

Post-op was hard to get through. They said about an hour, but could be up to three hours. James' was closest to three because his blood pressure was very low when they woke him up and also because the post-op nurse wanted him to be able to blow a certain amount on the spirometer before he got to go home. It wouldn't have been so bad, but his number disappeared from the status board; I never did get the grey "all done!" message that was supposed to follow post-op! So, yeah, I was "making buttons" until they called me back, and then we had to get the discharge papers and he had to get dressed and we had to use the bathroom, and then we had to stop by Kaiser for pain pills (which he never used, but we took them anyway) and only then could we go home. They didn't even put a bandage on it; the post-op person said they didn't want to impede the circulation in any way. All they put on it was surgical glue and it was fine for him to shower with; he just couldn't immerse. The surgical cut was less than three inches long. Got the usual warnings: look for excess redness or swelling or pus.

The surprise of the day was when James came home and took his blood sugar; even after not eating, it was almost 300. So he figured they might have given him some steroids, because he also discovered that even though he was bushed from the surgery, he was standing straighter and his knee wasn't creaking like it does all the time because he had no pain in his knees, back or hips at all.