Thursday, October 28, 2010

Hospitals are still not much fun

Tuesday was mom’s surgery day. Betty had to have her there at 5:45 am. Max and I got there about 6:30. They had already taken mom to pre-op to get ready so Max hobbled back to see her and Betty. I elected to stay in the waiting area since mom had both of her daughters there and she had to get ready and she sure did not need me underfoot. Besides, they had free coffee and donuts in the waiting area Oh! and they also had fresh fruit . Yep! I chose the donuts. Max was not there to “encourage” me to choose wisely. I mean after all, her mother was getting ready to have vascular surgery to clean out blocked arteries and I still head for the donuts. I see Max still has her work cut out for her to get me to eat better. But they must have been “healthier” because they were being served in the hospital. That’s my story anyway.

They took mom to surgery at about 7:30 am and said that it would be about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. At about 11:00am the Dr. came out and said that she was doing well but the procedure took a little longer and was “interesting”. It seems that her Carotid Artery on her right side was not in a normal position. He said it was a 180 degrees in a different direction and he had never seen that before. It gave him some challenges but he said everything worked out okay. Well, I at least have medical proof now that my mother-in-law is “Bass- Akwards!”.

Everything was going pretty well in recovery and once she got to ICU but the drain tube was not working right and she was experiencing quite a bit of bleeding. After the nurse changed the dressing a couple of times the blood flow was not slowing down. The nurse called the doctor back in to look at her and he stated that he was going to have to take her back into surgery to see what was going on. Mom was not too happy about going back in and Betty and Max had to re assure her that all was okay. That the Dr. just needed to go back and make sure all the stitching was okay. The Dr. told us it would only take about 15 to 20 minutes.

At 5:30 they took mom back in and did the exploratory to see why the bleeding would not stop. The Dr. came out at about 6:20 and told us everything was ok and he did not see anything unusual but he did make a few adjustments. Mom made it back to her ICU room at about 8:00pm. She looked a lot better than she did after the first recovery but she was more nauseated. Mom finally got settled down and was able to sleep so we told her that we would be 10 minutes away and that we would see her in the morning. The only thing she was happy about was that she had a very handsome male nurse.

Wednesday morning Max and I arrived a little after 9:00am and mom was already sitting up and they had already made her walk down the hall. The Dr. came in shortly and looked at her incision and it looked really good. He said that it was okay for her to go home. We were able to get her checked out and back at home by 12:30.

The rest of the day on Wednesday mom rested and Max kept her company while I started doing a little yard work. We plan on spending one or two nights here with mom to make sure she will be okay on her own.

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