In Which Kimberly Has Her Foot Surgery
Oct. 25th, 2018 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aThe surgery festivities sort of started on Wednesday night thanks to a helpful confluence of events. My old Cal and gaming friend Doug O. was visiting the area, and so we'd arranged to go to EndGame together on Wednesday night. He mentioned that he'd hoped to also see K. and also asked about dinner plans that evening. K. and I put that together, and we decided to all go to dinner at Angeline's in advance of the two of us going to Endgame.
This was nice because it meant that K. got a nice dinner out, at somewhere she'd been wanting to eat for a while, before her surgery. And she and Doug got to say "hi".
(And then Doug and I went to Endgame where we played two games of Jump Drive and one game of Innovation with Eric V. in a tight 100 minutes or so. I won the Jump Drives, Doug won the Innovation.)
This morning, I was up at a bit before 5am. K. had been up far earlier, so that she could get her last drinks of liquid before 3.30am, but I figured 4.50 would give me twenty minutes to get ready before our planned departure at 5.10. There was the usual frustrating 10-minute wait for a Lyft car that time in the morning, but we made it to the hospital a few minutes before K's check-in time of 5.30am.
We need not have hurried. On the desk was a sign that read, "Check-in desk opens 5.30am". That explained the nine or so people lounging about in the chairs in front of the desk. One of them had been told to be there at 5.00am, but it was overall insane to get everyone there just as the desk opened.
Finally, the desk opened and people politely went up one a time to check-in, though twice we had to ward off ravening hordes who'd come in after 5.30am, and didn't understand that there were people waiting around in the chairs. It took about 15 minutes to get the four parties ahead of us checked in. I wearied of hearing the woman at the desk ask people if they were in the parking garage, then telling them how to get down to the actual surgery area.
(Seriously, Kaiser was soooo much more efficient.)
Then they checked K in. No, we weren't in the parking garage, yes thank you for the directions.
One of the other people waiting for surgery was a phlegm factory, clearly very sick. We stayed as far away from her as we could, and hope that neither us will get sick right during K's recovery.
The surgery was down in the basement. We walked there, turned over K's admission papers to the surgery admissions, then waited as they called almost everyone else in. K finally went in and they prepped her while I waited longer in the lobby. They finally called me in and I found her in a gown, wrapped in a heated air mattress. They still hadn't given her any anesthetic and she was still waiting. We waited for her podiatrist, and then things finally got started. By the time they wheeled her off it was 7.35 or 7.40, for a surgery that was supposed to have started at 7.30.
But that was the last time we'd be running behind schedule all day.
I wandered out to try one of Starbuck's egg sandwiches (review: tasty), but that was mainly to stretch my legs and give myself something to do. I was back at the hospital by 8.15, and by 8.45 K's doctor stopped by to talk with me and report all was well. I waited another 45 minutes or until I was brought back to the stage-two-recovery room.
My time in the waiting room flew by in large part because I was prepared. I'd loaded up an iPad with comic TPBs from Hoopla, like I do when I fly, so I read Superman Earth Two V3 (good) and Jeff Lemire's Royal City V1 (OK, which was disappointing) and started Rick Remender's Low.
In the recovery room, I found K happily drinking a small can of something; she apparently didn't get two drinks this time. We called her friend giving us a ride and after some final checks, we were out of the hospital by 10.15, about forty-five minutes earlier than planned.
And that was the surgery, at least from the non-surgical side of it.
After lunch we both napped. (I took the day off work specifically so that I could nap after the surgery, so that I didn't have a crappy day trying to work on no sleep.)
And now we're in the recovery stage, where her pain drugs are likely to keep knocking her on her butt until she doesn't need them any more.
But hopefully, that'll be just a few to several days, and after a long year hopefully she'll be walking again ... sometime soonish.
This was nice because it meant that K. got a nice dinner out, at somewhere she'd been wanting to eat for a while, before her surgery. And she and Doug got to say "hi".
(And then Doug and I went to Endgame where we played two games of Jump Drive and one game of Innovation with Eric V. in a tight 100 minutes or so. I won the Jump Drives, Doug won the Innovation.)
This morning, I was up at a bit before 5am. K. had been up far earlier, so that she could get her last drinks of liquid before 3.30am, but I figured 4.50 would give me twenty minutes to get ready before our planned departure at 5.10. There was the usual frustrating 10-minute wait for a Lyft car that time in the morning, but we made it to the hospital a few minutes before K's check-in time of 5.30am.
We need not have hurried. On the desk was a sign that read, "Check-in desk opens 5.30am". That explained the nine or so people lounging about in the chairs in front of the desk. One of them had been told to be there at 5.00am, but it was overall insane to get everyone there just as the desk opened.
Finally, the desk opened and people politely went up one a time to check-in, though twice we had to ward off ravening hordes who'd come in after 5.30am, and didn't understand that there were people waiting around in the chairs. It took about 15 minutes to get the four parties ahead of us checked in. I wearied of hearing the woman at the desk ask people if they were in the parking garage, then telling them how to get down to the actual surgery area.
(Seriously, Kaiser was soooo much more efficient.)
Then they checked K in. No, we weren't in the parking garage, yes thank you for the directions.
One of the other people waiting for surgery was a phlegm factory, clearly very sick. We stayed as far away from her as we could, and hope that neither us will get sick right during K's recovery.
The surgery was down in the basement. We walked there, turned over K's admission papers to the surgery admissions, then waited as they called almost everyone else in. K finally went in and they prepped her while I waited longer in the lobby. They finally called me in and I found her in a gown, wrapped in a heated air mattress. They still hadn't given her any anesthetic and she was still waiting. We waited for her podiatrist, and then things finally got started. By the time they wheeled her off it was 7.35 or 7.40, for a surgery that was supposed to have started at 7.30.
But that was the last time we'd be running behind schedule all day.
I wandered out to try one of Starbuck's egg sandwiches (review: tasty), but that was mainly to stretch my legs and give myself something to do. I was back at the hospital by 8.15, and by 8.45 K's doctor stopped by to talk with me and report all was well. I waited another 45 minutes or until I was brought back to the stage-two-recovery room.
My time in the waiting room flew by in large part because I was prepared. I'd loaded up an iPad with comic TPBs from Hoopla, like I do when I fly, so I read Superman Earth Two V3 (good) and Jeff Lemire's Royal City V1 (OK, which was disappointing) and started Rick Remender's Low.
In the recovery room, I found K happily drinking a small can of something; she apparently didn't get two drinks this time. We called her friend giving us a ride and after some final checks, we were out of the hospital by 10.15, about forty-five minutes earlier than planned.
And that was the surgery, at least from the non-surgical side of it.
After lunch we both napped. (I took the day off work specifically so that I could nap after the surgery, so that I didn't have a crappy day trying to work on no sleep.)
And now we're in the recovery stage, where her pain drugs are likely to keep knocking her on her butt until she doesn't need them any more.
But hopefully, that'll be just a few to several days, and after a long year hopefully she'll be walking again ... sometime soonish.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-26 07:46 am (UTC)