How it went

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.

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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.