It is 7:50 pm. Your mother is finally in a hospital bed and recovering from her operation. Today has been a busy day. The alarm rang at 4:30 this morning, and we both showered and then left for the hospital by 5:00 am. We were scheduled to arrive by 5:30 with instructions that if we were not on time, the surgery would have to be postponed. We arrived at 5:20, parked the car and made our way into the hospital and to the check in station. We gave number one to a gentleman who was sitting in the waiting room when we arrived, and we took number two.
Finally we were checked in and instructed to go to another waiting room until the pre-operation nurses called for Donna. She was the second patient called back, and the second to go into surgery. Surgery was scheduled for 7:30 am, and the instructions stated that it would take two hours to prepare patients for surgery. Donna went into surgery at 7:35 am. I was permitted to go back and sit with her for about an hour and a half, after they did some of the prep work on her.
Dr. Anthone came into her room about 7:05, and looked at her stomach, before the surgery. When he pulled the sheet back he said “oh!”. Donna asked what was the matter. He responded that it was nothing, just that he could tell that the surgery would go well, because her stomach was laying flat. He said that is a very good sign. Donna told him that she was a compliant patient. On the original screening visit, Dr. Anthone had instructed Donna to lose one pound, and when she was weighed in, she had lost seven pounds (depending on the patient, sometimes patients are asked to lose up to ten pounds prior to the surgery – the main thing is to decrease the size of the liver. The liver lays over the other organs, and increases in size with weight gain, etc. Normally the most difficult thing to work around in these surgeries is the liver because of where it sits, so losing a few pounds of weight usually has a huge impact on the size of the liver.)
After they took her to the operating room, I went back out to the waiting room for a few minutes until I could see that they had started the surgery. Methodist hospital has a computer system where the status of the various patients is shown on a flat screen on the wall, using the first two characters of the patient’s last name, some other character, and then the first letter of the first name. Dr. Anthone said the surgery normally took 2.5 hours plus a half hour for set up time and a half hour for take down time. After that he would come to the waiting room and find me and give me an update on how the surgery went.
(At this point Husband went to get something to eat only to find a flat tire!)
Finally we were checked in and instructed to go to another waiting room until the pre-operation nurses called for Donna. She was the second patient called back, and the second to go into surgery. Surgery was scheduled for 7:30 am, and the instructions stated that it would take two hours to prepare patients for surgery. Donna went into surgery at 7:35 am. I was permitted to go back and sit with her for about an hour and a half, after they did some of the prep work on her.
Dr. Anthone came into her room about 7:05, and looked at her stomach, before the surgery. When he pulled the sheet back he said “oh!”. Donna asked what was the matter. He responded that it was nothing, just that he could tell that the surgery would go well, because her stomach was laying flat. He said that is a very good sign. Donna told him that she was a compliant patient. On the original screening visit, Dr. Anthone had instructed Donna to lose one pound, and when she was weighed in, she had lost seven pounds (depending on the patient, sometimes patients are asked to lose up to ten pounds prior to the surgery – the main thing is to decrease the size of the liver. The liver lays over the other organs, and increases in size with weight gain, etc. Normally the most difficult thing to work around in these surgeries is the liver because of where it sits, so losing a few pounds of weight usually has a huge impact on the size of the liver.)
After they took her to the operating room, I went back out to the waiting room for a few minutes until I could see that they had started the surgery. Methodist hospital has a computer system where the status of the various patients is shown on a flat screen on the wall, using the first two characters of the patient’s last name, some other character, and then the first letter of the first name. Dr. Anthone said the surgery normally took 2.5 hours plus a half hour for set up time and a half hour for take down time. After that he would come to the waiting room and find me and give me an update on how the surgery went.
(At this point Husband went to get something to eat only to find a flat tire!)
. They wanted to keep the car and look at all oft the tires, but I needed to get back to the hospital by noon, because that was when I anticipated that Donna would be our of post op and moved to a hospital room. It was 11:45 when I started driving back to Methodist. I arrived about 12:10, and was relieved that she had not been moved to a room yet. Donna wanted to make sure that I was there once she got into a room.
I waited and waited. No change in status. Finally I went to the desk and asked how long they thought it might take. I was informed that the hospital was over crowded, and that they were waiting for patients to be discharged so that they could clean a room and then have a room available to move her to. So, the receptionist took down the cell phone number and told me she would call me when a room was assigned.
I was back in the waiting room at 3:00, and still no change in status. I waited some more. Finally the cell phone rang at about 4:00. It was a friend from church returning my voice message from earlier and checking on the status of Donna. After the phone call, I checked with the receptionist again. Still they were waiting for a room. I told the receptionist to please call me on the cell phone once a room was available, that I was going to go and sit in a different waiting room where the chairs were more comfortable, and where there was less noise, so that I could work on the computer a little. I noticed other families in that waiting room that seemed to be in the same predicament. They were waiting for patients to be moved from post op to a room, which there were none of. Finally, at 5:20, the cell phone rang, and a nurse was calling down from the 6th floor, and told me that Donna had asked for me. I was soooo mad. I asked how long she had been in the room and they said since about 4:20 pm. I’m still mad about how they did us this afternoon. It is ridiculous that she had to wait over five hours for a room to be made available, and there was no way for me to go back and see her all that time, and then when they did put her in a room, the receptionist never did call me on the cell phone! If there is any survey at the end of this hospital stay, I will have some dissatisfaction to share.
Donna seems to be doing well. She is in some pain. She did not want an epidural, so she is on a pain medication pump, where she can push a button after 15 minutes and get a dose of pain reliever. She was pushing the button before the nurse ever got authorization from Dr. Anthone to set the pump up for her. Dumb that she was in the room for about an hour before they called the doctor to get authorization! While she was in post op, they were giving her shots of pain reliever in her IV tubes. But nothing once they sent her to her room. Then she went about an hour before she pushed the button the second time. She said she was trying to go an hour before pain reliever shots if she could. The nurse told her to not be a hero, and to push the button if she was feeling the pain, and not make herself uncomfortable. If she can keep the pain reliever going so that she can rest, I think the recovery will be better for her. She always did the same thing with the cesarean births – always tried to go longer before taking the pain medication, etc. I just hope she doesn’t make it too hard on herself.
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