OT: the wife's surgery

[Silvan]

I originally sent this to Dave Leader, but since some of you folks are following my wife's plight, I'm also posting it here:

She had more than one duct coming out of her gallbladder, and the surgeon didn't notice this until after he had yanked it away from her bile duct. He tore a gaping hole in her bile duct, so he had to open her up and go in to clean up the mess. She has a shunt in the bile duct and a bag on her side. It's supposed to form a... fistula? eventually, and then they'll yank the tube out, about six weeks from now.

She's alive. She's not doing very well. He says she will recover completely, and her prognosis is excellent. Two to five days in the hospital, depending on how she does. It's hard to judge with her still feeling the aftereffects of the anaesthesia, so I'm trying to remain optimistic. However, if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the long side of the stay. She really looks terrible, and I feel like it's something of a miracle that I'm not making funeral arrangements. Just the vibe. I think they almost lost her.

Or maybe the guy feels guilty because he screwed up. I don't know. Something just isn't quite right with the mood surrounding her. There's too much tension, and a feeling of things not said. A heaviness, a charge in the air, a, well, foreboding. The surgeon seemed genuinely relieved when I took the news without freaking out. Maybe all I felt was his dread that I was going to crawl up his ass and start yelling at him and screaming about malpractice. Or maybe she came as close to returning her constituent elements to dirt as it feels like from the mood in the room.

I'll be OK, Dave. The hardest part so far has been being strong for them, so they don't see how scared I am for their mother.

This is definitely not the kind of outcome I was expecting, or I would have been more worried yesterday. I didn't get worried until she had been in the OR for two, then three, then four hours for a 45 minute procedure. On the bright side, it wouldn't have done me any good to be worried sooner, and it isn't doing me any good to be worried now either. It's out of my hands. There's absolutely nothing I can do here, so I have to stand back and let the professionals do their job.

[rcook5]

Well, praying sounds like a good idea. It'll pass, but I feel for you in the meantime.

--RC

"Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself. It just yells 'can't you remember anything I've told you?' and lets fly with a club. -- John W. Cambell Jr.

[Lew Hodgett]

[Charlie Self]

Go with the final thought there. Being worried doesn't do any good, so take care the kids, smile like a crazy ape when you see your wife, keep your fingers crossed (like any good pagan) and pray like any good religionist.

You're both in my thoughts, which probably doesn't help much, but might.

Charlie Self "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." George Orwell

[Leon]

My sisters 92 year old mother in law went in and has similar surgery after Thanksgiving. She is out now and doing remarkably well for her age according to the surgeon although until her family was able to be with her she was not doing so well. Your being there will make a world of difference in her recovery especially until she is off the pain killers. Keep a close eye on her to keep her cheered up.

[Mark Jerde]

My wife looked like hell after a nasty near-emergency c-section. (Fetal heartrate kept going down. The baby was being dangerously stressed. Not to mention the father watching the display. I did an oscar-level performance of a worried, near-panic husband/parent, got the attention of the overworked staff, and they whisked her off straight away.) Despite how my wife looked initially after surgery she was out of the hospital in the expected time. Now my daughter is 17 & all is still well. Hopefully your story will have the same kind of happy ending.

You and your family are in my thoughts & prayers.

-- Mark

[firstjois]

[snip]

You have the right to a copy of the record the surgeon dictates at the end of surgery telling what was done and why. These get typed up within a few days and placed into a record in the hospital's record room and you might want to get a copy of it. Some places charge a few dollars for a copy but nothing serious. After the surgeon's dictation gets typed up it still takes a few days for it to go to the record room so you might call before going over. Hospital information could tell you the phone number and or extension for the record room and so on.

You probably wouldn't get much sense from it but almost any nurse or corpsman could get a good sense of what happened and explain it to you.

I don't know anything about law suits - that is not my concern, but I do know that they give each different type of surgery a different fancy name and eventually you and your wife will be asked what the surgery was and with this record you will have an exact name. And in a couple of years when you try to remember exactly what they did/removed/added - you'll be able to find out easily.

Best wishes!

Josie

[Patriarch]

Silvan wrote in news: [e-mail]:

There's nothing that shakes me quite as badly as the notion that my wife isn't doing well. Nothing makes me feel more helpless, more immediately useless, more frustrated. I feel what you're feeling now.

You have our support and friendship. If you aren't offended by the notion of others lending their faith on your behalf, you can have that, too.

Hug the kids, and then leave them with friends or family, grab a large stack of books, and go sit with your wife until she kicks you out.

Everything else can wait.

Patriarch

[Norman D. Crow]

You are all in our prayers Mike.

[Mark & Juanita]

... snip

... and prayers for the professionals doing that job aren't a bad idea either.

We'll keep you and your wife in ours.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Now we'll just use some glue to hold things in place until the brads dry +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Morris Dovey]

Good words - well and truly spoken. I wish there were something any of us could do to help speed her recovery and ease your worry.

[Dave Balderstone]

Hang in there. That's always been hard for me too, but I've gotten good at it (wish I hadn't had the opportunity).

Once you know she's fine, *then* you can collapse with the shakes for a few hours.

I'll echo what Patriarch sez. Go sit with her.

[Bullwinkle J. Moose]

Echoing Patriarch's sentiments to the max! Prayers are with you my friend!

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Good advice. They may not even kick you out. When my wife was in for 6 days, I was able to stay in the room with her 24 hours a day. That was especially good since we were 400 miles from home on vacation. The room had a window seat that converted to a bed. The hospital gave me sheets, blanket, etc.

She may not say it now, but she will appreciate your staying by her side and being there if for nothing else but to give her a sip of water or fix the blanket. This is your time to be tough as she will need some extra help when she gets home also.

I hope she has a good recovery. The body can do amazing things and heal it self. You both have my best wishes. Ed

[patrick conroy]

So did I after all my surgeries. Got the pictures to prove it.

Hell - that's hospitals, to me anyway.

Will say a prayer for her on this end. Dunno' what kind'a standing I'm in with Him these days but it can't hurt to ask.

[jo4hn]

blessings.

[Silvan]

They kick everyone out at 9:00 now. I don't have anyone to overnight the kids with that many days in a row anyway, and they need their father. Fortunately, the hospital is just about two minutes from here. (The hospital where I was born, actually. Oh, I'm a travelin' man.)

I made lots of trips. She was groggy. Much worse than a couple weeks ago when whe was in for pancreatitis. She slept a lot, ate a little. I noticed the gigantic syringe of some morphine looking stuff they had ready to hook into her IV was still dangling on the floor, so I guess she isn't in agony pain wise.

It's sad, really. The flowers I got her from the first hospital stay aren't even dead yet.

It's not as bad as it could be, though, and we'll get through it. Pragmatism notwithstanding, I can't exactly force myself to put a happy face on. It could be worse, but it's still pretty damn bad. I'm really glad she's alive. That haunted look on the surgeon's face scares me, but she's off the BP monitor now, and she managed to eat a little dinner. I think the last of the vultures have been shot in the head, and it's just a waiting game now.

I hope.

Thanks for all the kind wishes and prayers, and my condolences to those of you who have had it so much worse than this that this series of posts sounds like whining.

So much worse than this that this... Now there's an awkward sentence for you.

[Dave Balderstone]

The last thing you sound like is whining, Silvan.

We're all concerned and praying/pulling/rooting for SWMBO to be out of the hospital as soon as possible.

Don't worry about unloading here. We may not be family, but we're as near as dammit.

[Silvan]

That's an interesting spin on it. Something to pull out for the grandkids some day too. Yeah, back at the end of aught four your grandmomma has a bidisfrecto plifozoidinal otomaopoesfrufuluar dishevinification of the ultoid spaltafacular blizfra. Back then medical care was so cheap you could stay in a room in a hospital for a paltry $600 a night.

(Let's see, used to be $60 30 years ago, so 30 years from now it will be $6,000 a night, right?)

[Silvan]

:)