4:30 am: Wake up.
5:20 am: Pick up Mel's dad.
6:00 am: Arrive at Surgical Pavilion, which sounds too festive. Realize we forgot Mel's CPAP machine. I'll have time to get it later...
6:20 am: Mel is called back. Dad and I receive a pager. It's just like the ones you get at restaurants to let you know your table is ready, except it's shaped exactly the opposite of a coaster, more like a little blue stun gun.
7:10 am: Dad and I are called back to the prep area. Mel is in a good mood. The surgery should take 4 hours, very routine.
7:30 am: They roll her up to the OR. Dad and I retire to the waiting area. I am reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. He's reading The Last Jihad by Joel C. Rosenberg.
10:30 am: Carrie, Mel's sister, arrives to wait with us.
11:50 pm: I get paged. It's a nurse in the OR. Mel's surgery is taking a bit longer, but it should be just another hour or so. I decide this is an okay time to jaunt home for the CPAP machine, and grab some food.
12:15 pm: Arrive home. Michelle, Mel's other sister, is there with Jacob. Everything's fine.
12:30 pm: I arrive back at the hospital. Carrie takes dad for some lunch.
1:05 pm: Dr. Dan arrives to let me know things went pretty well. When they went in, they found that Mel's liver was about twice the size it should have been, so it was now a huge obstacle, since it was sitting on top of the things they had to work on. They had a special instrument to get it up and out of the way. However, the pushing caused a crack to form in the liver. Not a big deal, it won't affect the liver's function and it should heal up on it's own in a few days. The enlarged liver is another product of the obesity, so it's yet another problem that will be corrected by the bypass! The bypass itself was easy, he says. He leaves me with a drawing and some photos. Apparently, his residents were impressed. Mel is in recovery, and will be sent to the ICU, just as a precaution, due to the liver.
1:30 pm: Carrie and dad return, and I fill them in. Carrie leaves: she was working at the hospital prior to joining us, and this is now well into her bedtime.
4:00 pm: I finish my book. It's a good book. I start further studies on my new 4th Edition D&D books, with a folder over the covers so as not to offend dad.
5:30 pm: They page us. Mel is in her room in the ICU, and we can go see her.
5:40 pm: Mel is totally out of it. She's clearly in a lot of pain, and they are working on managing it. She's not very responsive. We bug out after 20 minutes or so.
----
I tried to call her this morning around 8:00 am, and she got on the phone and said, "In pain. Can't talk," and hung up on me. She was asleep when her parents visited around noon, and she was mostly asleep when I visited after work, and Jaey and Martina showed up.
However, her super nice nurse said that Mel had been up out of her bed and into a chair quite ambitiously, and was doing very well...just not when we were around :-P
She should be moved to a regular room tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Under the knife
Tomorrow, Mel will be undergoing a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. She's been actively preparing for about three weeks now with something called OptiFast, and today she had to drink some nasty stuff to fully flush out the contents of her intestines. She has been remarkable in this time, easily forgoing regular Coke in favor of diet sodas or tea, and cheating only with great restraint.
In reality, she's been prepared for this for over a year now. With her spinal injuries, this is the best way for her to change her life and possibly remove some of the pressure on her spine and alleviate her constant pain.
When I was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2005, one of the first things I did in response was throw out all my summer shorts. Mel has responded to her even more dire situation with great spirit and resolve.
After tomorrow, many simple things about her life will change forever. No more sodas of any kind. No sugary snacks for a long time, and even when she has recovered, she can only indulge in minute amounts. Totally re-learning how to eat, shop, and cook with ruthless efficiency, all to meet her nutritional needs with tiny portions of food.
But we both know the benefits are worth the sacrifices. Her swingy hormones will return to normal. Her sleep apnea will go away. Her mobility will improve. And the biggest hope is that her pains will subside. That means less pain prescriptions, the ability to walk for more than ten minutes, and eventually the ability to sleep in a regular bed instead of a recliner.
We've tried to explain things to Jacob, and he's mostly okay. He has been perturbed that I have had to do all the cooking for just he and I lately; "Dad, tell Mom it's her turn to make dinner tonight, you have to come play with me!" At one point, he also told his mom that he didn't want her to change because he loved her just the way she was. Aww!
Maybe I'm unrealistic, but I expect things to go pretty smoothly. Mel has a gift for finding opportunity within adversity, as it is from her that I have learned all I know about being stubborn. She has already discovered new things about food she never noticed before. It will be a beautiful transformation to watch.
In reality, she's been prepared for this for over a year now. With her spinal injuries, this is the best way for her to change her life and possibly remove some of the pressure on her spine and alleviate her constant pain.
When I was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2005, one of the first things I did in response was throw out all my summer shorts. Mel has responded to her even more dire situation with great spirit and resolve.
After tomorrow, many simple things about her life will change forever. No more sodas of any kind. No sugary snacks for a long time, and even when she has recovered, she can only indulge in minute amounts. Totally re-learning how to eat, shop, and cook with ruthless efficiency, all to meet her nutritional needs with tiny portions of food.
But we both know the benefits are worth the sacrifices. Her swingy hormones will return to normal. Her sleep apnea will go away. Her mobility will improve. And the biggest hope is that her pains will subside. That means less pain prescriptions, the ability to walk for more than ten minutes, and eventually the ability to sleep in a regular bed instead of a recliner.
We've tried to explain things to Jacob, and he's mostly okay. He has been perturbed that I have had to do all the cooking for just he and I lately; "Dad, tell Mom it's her turn to make dinner tonight, you have to come play with me!" At one point, he also told his mom that he didn't want her to change because he loved her just the way she was. Aww!
Maybe I'm unrealistic, but I expect things to go pretty smoothly. Mel has a gift for finding opportunity within adversity, as it is from her that I have learned all I know about being stubborn. She has already discovered new things about food she never noticed before. It will be a beautiful transformation to watch.
Monday, July 21, 2008
My trip to McDonald's
So I'm sitting at McDonald's on Sunday afternoon. Jacob had run off to play, and I was sitting at the table watching.
A family shuffled in and sat at the table behind ours: Grandma, her grown son, and his kids. They had apparently just come from church. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but...
Grandma was a Sunday school teacher, and one of the kids was in her class. She went on for several minutes about how some younger teacher was doing everything wrong, not like how she did things. She was critical of everything this other teacher did. Now, I certainly don't know the details of what really happened, but she just had nothing but unkind things to say, and she was saying them in front of the children. I mean, that's one teacher undermining the credibility and authority of another teacher behind her back.
She went on to quiz the grandson who was in her class what they went over that day. The boy was pretty mopey and unresponsive, so it was really just Grandma talking to herself:
"Who did we talk about today? Abraham? What did he do? Talk to God? What did God tell him?" etc...
So, the kid absorbed 0% of the class lesson, and then got an earful of Grandma bad-mouthing another lady from church. He was pretty withdrawn, didn't want to eat, didn't want to play, and Grandma just kept hassling him about the lesson. Eventually she essentially ordered him to cheer up.
I'm not sure what the lesson was supposed to be.
A family shuffled in and sat at the table behind ours: Grandma, her grown son, and his kids. They had apparently just come from church. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but...
Grandma was a Sunday school teacher, and one of the kids was in her class. She went on for several minutes about how some younger teacher was doing everything wrong, not like how she did things. She was critical of everything this other teacher did. Now, I certainly don't know the details of what really happened, but she just had nothing but unkind things to say, and she was saying them in front of the children. I mean, that's one teacher undermining the credibility and authority of another teacher behind her back.
She went on to quiz the grandson who was in her class what they went over that day. The boy was pretty mopey and unresponsive, so it was really just Grandma talking to herself:
"Who did we talk about today? Abraham? What did he do? Talk to God? What did God tell him?" etc...
So, the kid absorbed 0% of the class lesson, and then got an earful of Grandma bad-mouthing another lady from church. He was pretty withdrawn, didn't want to eat, didn't want to play, and Grandma just kept hassling him about the lesson. Eventually she essentially ordered him to cheer up.
I'm not sure what the lesson was supposed to be.
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