Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Tired...
I am so tired. (I would say that I've never been so tired before in my life, but I've had 3 newborns so it may not be true.) I am tired of sitting in the hospital. I am tired of being away from my kids. I am tired of eating hospital cafeteria food (even if it is really good). I am tired of not sleeping in my own bed. I am tired of doctors. I am tired of hospital slow motion. I am tired of my husband going through health problems. I am tired of him having to have test after test. (And I know he's more tired of it than I am!) I am emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted. How tired do you think you have to get before the Lord finally decides that you have successfully handled a trial and He takes it away? I certainly don't know.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Portland - Surgery Day
I have really struggled with writing this post, mostly because I hate writing about things until they are 'complete' and we are nowhere near finished with the ongoings of the surgery but I figure people are curious as to the nitty gritty details so I figured I'd better write it anyway.
Surgery was September 26th. When we called the Friday before to get his surgery time and when we should show up (as instructed) they told us he would be the second surgery but that he needed an MRI before so we needed to show up at 6:30 a.m. When we showed up at 6:30 a.m. everyone seemed a little confused as to why we were there so early but they went with it. We checked in and then headed down to the pre-op area where they directed us to his little curtained area, had him gown up, and then went through all his medical info. We settled in and watched some TV while we waited. (As a side note, you should see this place. I have been in pre-op in Great Falls and it is just a couple of rooms and a nurses station. This place has 3-4 rooms with 4 curtains in each and tons of nurses milling around. They are shuffling people in and out of there all day as surgeries proceed. It's pretty wild.)
Eventually a nurse and a doctor showed up. The nurse started his IV and the doctor told us he was there to do some prep work because the surgeons were going to use some special technique on him which required that several spots on his head shaved and special little 'stickers' (they looked sort of like those white hole re-inforcer stickers except made out of foam) applied, then they would do the MRI. Apparently the way the technique works is that it gives them reference points so that they can guide themselves in to the tumor using some sort of virtual reality. We got to go with him down to MRI. I actually peeked around the corner while we were waiting for him and could see the screens. There was one that showed the actual image and another that was video of him in the tube. It was the only time that I saw any of his MRIs and I was really surprised to see his tumor situated in the middle of his head. He got wheeled back to pre-op and we settled in to wait. At the time we thought he was the 11 a.m. surgery so I figured we had another hour or so before they came to take him back. It turned out that somebody had miscommunicated and he was the third surgery of the day so we got to sit there and watch him flip through the channels for several more hours. At one point, I sat on the little rolly stool and laid my head forward on his bed and fell asleep. Not very comfortable but apparently I was really tired. Somewhere around 2 p.m. the resident, Dr. Roundy, two med students, 2 OR nurses, and the anesthesia intern showed up. They all gave us some instruction as to what they would be doing and why they were there. Dr. Roundy wrote something on his neck, signed some paperwork and they all left. I have to admit that that was the moment it hit me. I started to cry a little. I didn't want to but I totally couldn't help myself. At about 2:30, the anesthesiologist and the intern came for him. The waterworks started up again when I hugged him but I saw him wipe away a tear too.
Jo and I decided to leave the hospital for a while after being there for 8 hours already since they had my cell phone number and had told me that we could leave the hospital and they would give us phone updates. We were starving for lunch so I looked up restaurants on the gps and pretty much the closest one was The Old Spaghetti Factory, which is also one of my very favorites. It was beautiful and right on the waterfront. There were only two other groups in the restaurant at the time so we got an amazing table overlooking the river. It very peaceful and pretty much exactly what I needed to soothe my nerves. Afterward, Jo wanted to go to IKEA really badly so we got out the trusty gps and headed that way. I had never been inside an IKEA, though I have drive past one in Germany and in Utah, so it was a completely new experience. We had been wandering around for maybe half an hour when my phone rang. It was the hospital and before I could get any information, the call dropped. Apparently IKEA is a cell phone dead zone. I was so upset. I started practically running for the exit and let me tell you, IKEA doesn't make that easy. They want you to stay in the store for hours so way to the exit twists and turns through the entired two levels of warehouse sized store. When I finally got down by the checkouts, I had service again and a voicemail from the OR nurse letting me know that they were finally starting the surgery and asking if we could return to the hospital to make it easier to give us updates. (By the way, this was what we had expected as far as surgery timeline because they told us it would probably take an hour to set up all the specialized equipment they were using before they could actually start the surgery.) We paid for our few items we had picked up and then headed back to the hosptial. By that time is was some time after 4 p.m. and we got stuck in some traffic heading back into the city, so much so that when they called to give me the update that they had finally reached the tumor, it was two hours after the first phone call (that dropped) and we weren't back to the hospital yet.
We found our way to the surgery waiting room once back at the hospital. I read a book while Jo made friends with the people who were sitting by us. There was one really nice lady whose husband was having a tumor removed from his tongue. She said it was the second time he'd had cancer on his tongue and they were really worried because he'd already had radiation and the doctors said he couldn't have it a second time because of the damage it does to the tissue. The other people were a brother and sister whose father had been hit by a truck while riding his bike to work that morning and had a bunch of broken bones and damaged organs. We ended up watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and then Monday Night Footbal (though I mostly read). Dr. Roundy finally came in at about 7:45 p.m. to tell us that everything had gone well and they had gotten all of it that they could see. He said Adam would be in recovery and then have a CT scan before they would take him to the ICU where we could see him but that would probably be in an hour. Someone called in about an hour and said that they were taking him to CT so we should come down to the ICU waiting area in about 45 minutes and someone would come get us once he was there. The ICU waiting area was nowhere near as nice as the surgery waiting area and there was a ginormous Hispanic family and a ginormous Muslim family, each taking up about a quarter of the room, and being loud enough for groups twice their size. We waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and nobody ever came and got us. At 10:30 p.m., I finally went to the ICU phone and called in to see if he was there yet and he was but we had to wait for his nurse's permission to come in. (So annoying, although I'm sure in a lot of cases, it's necessary.) Once we were shown into his room, it was so hard. He was still fairly out, had a huge bandage behind his left ear, two more IVs than he had gone in with, and bloody spots like a halo around his head from the equipment they had used and apparently screwed in to his skin. He woke up every few minutes and asked for ice chips but otherwise was completely out until we woke him to tell him we were leaving for the night and his nurse came in to do the hourly neurological check. When she asked if he had any pain anywhere, he gestured to his heart and said "In here, cause my wife is leaving." When the nurse asked him to follow her fingers with his eyes, his eyes kept rolling back in his head as he fell back asleep. Finally he told us he'd been having a dream that the government was crossing beavers and grizzly bears and that they were "unstoppable forces of nature". I got the giggles so bad at that one. We told him goodnight and went back to the hotel to get some much needed sleep, though we got locked out of the hotel when we tried to used our room keys to unlock an exterior door and then couldn't get into our room. Apparently we had been a little too close to the MRI machine that morning and it had de-magnetized our room key cards. And that pretty much sums up the way the whole day went...
Surgery was September 26th. When we called the Friday before to get his surgery time and when we should show up (as instructed) they told us he would be the second surgery but that he needed an MRI before so we needed to show up at 6:30 a.m. When we showed up at 6:30 a.m. everyone seemed a little confused as to why we were there so early but they went with it. We checked in and then headed down to the pre-op area where they directed us to his little curtained area, had him gown up, and then went through all his medical info. We settled in and watched some TV while we waited. (As a side note, you should see this place. I have been in pre-op in Great Falls and it is just a couple of rooms and a nurses station. This place has 3-4 rooms with 4 curtains in each and tons of nurses milling around. They are shuffling people in and out of there all day as surgeries proceed. It's pretty wild.)
Eventually a nurse and a doctor showed up. The nurse started his IV and the doctor told us he was there to do some prep work because the surgeons were going to use some special technique on him which required that several spots on his head shaved and special little 'stickers' (they looked sort of like those white hole re-inforcer stickers except made out of foam) applied, then they would do the MRI. Apparently the way the technique works is that it gives them reference points so that they can guide themselves in to the tumor using some sort of virtual reality. We got to go with him down to MRI. I actually peeked around the corner while we were waiting for him and could see the screens. There was one that showed the actual image and another that was video of him in the tube. It was the only time that I saw any of his MRIs and I was really surprised to see his tumor situated in the middle of his head. He got wheeled back to pre-op and we settled in to wait. At the time we thought he was the 11 a.m. surgery so I figured we had another hour or so before they came to take him back. It turned out that somebody had miscommunicated and he was the third surgery of the day so we got to sit there and watch him flip through the channels for several more hours. At one point, I sat on the little rolly stool and laid my head forward on his bed and fell asleep. Not very comfortable but apparently I was really tired. Somewhere around 2 p.m. the resident, Dr. Roundy, two med students, 2 OR nurses, and the anesthesia intern showed up. They all gave us some instruction as to what they would be doing and why they were there. Dr. Roundy wrote something on his neck, signed some paperwork and they all left. I have to admit that that was the moment it hit me. I started to cry a little. I didn't want to but I totally couldn't help myself. At about 2:30, the anesthesiologist and the intern came for him. The waterworks started up again when I hugged him but I saw him wipe away a tear too.
Jo and I decided to leave the hospital for a while after being there for 8 hours already since they had my cell phone number and had told me that we could leave the hospital and they would give us phone updates. We were starving for lunch so I looked up restaurants on the gps and pretty much the closest one was The Old Spaghetti Factory, which is also one of my very favorites. It was beautiful and right on the waterfront. There were only two other groups in the restaurant at the time so we got an amazing table overlooking the river. It very peaceful and pretty much exactly what I needed to soothe my nerves. Afterward, Jo wanted to go to IKEA really badly so we got out the trusty gps and headed that way. I had never been inside an IKEA, though I have drive past one in Germany and in Utah, so it was a completely new experience. We had been wandering around for maybe half an hour when my phone rang. It was the hospital and before I could get any information, the call dropped. Apparently IKEA is a cell phone dead zone. I was so upset. I started practically running for the exit and let me tell you, IKEA doesn't make that easy. They want you to stay in the store for hours so way to the exit twists and turns through the entired two levels of warehouse sized store. When I finally got down by the checkouts, I had service again and a voicemail from the OR nurse letting me know that they were finally starting the surgery and asking if we could return to the hospital to make it easier to give us updates. (By the way, this was what we had expected as far as surgery timeline because they told us it would probably take an hour to set up all the specialized equipment they were using before they could actually start the surgery.) We paid for our few items we had picked up and then headed back to the hosptial. By that time is was some time after 4 p.m. and we got stuck in some traffic heading back into the city, so much so that when they called to give me the update that they had finally reached the tumor, it was two hours after the first phone call (that dropped) and we weren't back to the hospital yet.
We found our way to the surgery waiting room once back at the hospital. I read a book while Jo made friends with the people who were sitting by us. There was one really nice lady whose husband was having a tumor removed from his tongue. She said it was the second time he'd had cancer on his tongue and they were really worried because he'd already had radiation and the doctors said he couldn't have it a second time because of the damage it does to the tissue. The other people were a brother and sister whose father had been hit by a truck while riding his bike to work that morning and had a bunch of broken bones and damaged organs. We ended up watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and then Monday Night Footbal (though I mostly read). Dr. Roundy finally came in at about 7:45 p.m. to tell us that everything had gone well and they had gotten all of it that they could see. He said Adam would be in recovery and then have a CT scan before they would take him to the ICU where we could see him but that would probably be in an hour. Someone called in about an hour and said that they were taking him to CT so we should come down to the ICU waiting area in about 45 minutes and someone would come get us once he was there. The ICU waiting area was nowhere near as nice as the surgery waiting area and there was a ginormous Hispanic family and a ginormous Muslim family, each taking up about a quarter of the room, and being loud enough for groups twice their size. We waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and nobody ever came and got us. At 10:30 p.m., I finally went to the ICU phone and called in to see if he was there yet and he was but we had to wait for his nurse's permission to come in. (So annoying, although I'm sure in a lot of cases, it's necessary.) Once we were shown into his room, it was so hard. He was still fairly out, had a huge bandage behind his left ear, two more IVs than he had gone in with, and bloody spots like a halo around his head from the equipment they had used and apparently screwed in to his skin. He woke up every few minutes and asked for ice chips but otherwise was completely out until we woke him to tell him we were leaving for the night and his nurse came in to do the hourly neurological check. When she asked if he had any pain anywhere, he gestured to his heart and said "In here, cause my wife is leaving." When the nurse asked him to follow her fingers with his eyes, his eyes kept rolling back in his head as he fell back asleep. Finally he told us he'd been having a dream that the government was crossing beavers and grizzly bears and that they were "unstoppable forces of nature". I got the giggles so bad at that one. We told him goodnight and went back to the hotel to get some much needed sleep, though we got locked out of the hotel when we tried to used our room keys to unlock an exterior door and then couldn't get into our room. Apparently we had been a little too close to the MRI machine that morning and it had de-magnetized our room key cards. And that pretty much sums up the way the whole day went...
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Private
Hey everyone... I've been following the blog stats and am concerned about where some of the viewers are so I am going to switch to private to prevent it. It's annoying, I know, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Email me so that I can add you to the list if you'd like to keep reading. melissa.hatch@rocketmail.com
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