15 June 2010 hanging ‘round the hospital- part 1

15 June 2010 hanging ‘round the hospital


We crawled out of bed at 0337 this morning for the trip back to Kingsport. That left time for a shower and a quick trip outside with Loki. Then it was load the packs and us in the car and back onto the highway.

We fought condensation on the windows all the way up. Some weather conditions make it impossible to drive the Pathfinder without having the wipers on continually to deal with the windshield fogging over. We parked in the hospital lot at 0550. They put Gloria into a holding room to change close and complete her admit to the unit. They took her to Anesthesia prep/holding at 0700 for an 0800 procedure.

What is planned for her is a microscopic decompression of L3-L4, which will ideally take about 90 minutes skin-to-skin. Recovery will add at least an hour to that time.

I’m in the surgery waiting area, (0725) which is unstaffed until 0800. Until then, when the phone rings, everyone hopes someone else will pick it up and summon the intended family.

At 0715 a volunteer came in pushing a coffee/tea cart. I took some iced tea, and then realized that it may be aspartame laden. The follow-up Mimi-pastry came complete with a new testament quotation wrapped around the actual wrapper. I nuked some biscuit/sausage/pseudo-steak things before leaving home and ate them in Gloria’s prep room. They, along with leftover coffee and some unsweetened tea from home, will get me through the surgery period.

0836 – The OR called about 0830 to tell me that the procedure had begun. Gloria handled induction well and should do fine. I’m happy to have that update.

The waiting room is a circus of sorts. Some patients must have ten family/friends waiting for them. I’m definitely a minority, being the single family member waiting for Gloria. There is, thankfully, no television in this area That means no Fox news, no sports, and no religious broadcasts. Every package of paper they’ve given us to read has a number to call to have someone pray for, &/or with you. We’re tempted to ask for a minyan just to see the puzzled looks on faces.

I was lucky to get a chair next to a table, blocking one side from other people. Unfortunately, the other side was filled up by two women with two kids, a whiney, tired girl in diapers, and a hyper-kinetic boy. The women are letting the kids wander around while they jabber on cell phones.

I recall the days when children under 12 were not allowed out of the lobby in hospitals. There was a valid reason for that restriction then. And in today’s world, with parents all too willing to let their kids annoy others, the restriction should still be on the books and enforced by every hospital and surgical center in the nation.

0857 – The coffee/tea/jesus cart is back. There is a constant dull background roar of conversations, augmented by various cell phones ringing in various obnoxious manners. Nextel does not support down-loaded ring tones so while we once looked at choosing owl and loon cries as ring tones we were saved from the expense and from annoying others with our choices. I’m really glad I chose not to wear my hearing aids. The rooms here echo badly and I was really tired of the background when we got home yesterday. Today is so much worse, so much more background to wade through and screen out. It’s hard to describe how difficult and how exhausting it can be trying to wear hearing aids in such environs without seeming ungrateful. I appreciate the effort and expense undertaken by VA to help me compensate for my hearing deficit. But it is not just plug and hear with hearing aids. They amplify the stuff you don’t want to hear as well as what you want to hear.

At 0905 I’m starting to feel the sleep deficit and am wishing the two women and their kids would move to other seating.

At 0920 the women and kids got up and went off to plague some other location. Around the same time a 250 lb + man in orange athletic pants and a torn t-shirt came in and plopped down directly in front of me. His time has been spent receiving and sending text messages, I guess, and some other type of message/link that arrives with synthetic techno-pop like sound. I guess it is a smart phone application as he spent ten minutes repeatedly throwing his hand upward while holding his phone. Each upward tossing motion boosted the volume and repeated the noise pattern. Toys for the easily amused? Certainly not considerate of neighboring people.

In the middle of his repeated noise, one of the women and both kids returned. The kids are now climbing on furniture, running in and obstructing traffic flow.