We were told to arrive at the hospital 2 1/2 hours before the surgery began at 8am PST yesterday. We made it to Tacoma General minutes after 5:30am PST and parked across the street in the parking garage. Hand in hand my wife and I walked across the street and into the J wing of the hospital. We took the elevator to the fifth floor and wove our way through the maze-like halls to the surgical admission wing.

The nurse behind the desk asked for my wife’s name and then looked up on a chart of the scheduled surgeries for the morning. Spotting her name, the nurse led us into a small room with bed and bright orange outlets in the wall and asked my wife to change into the ever fashionable hospital gown.

[Note: The picture above is with my wife’s permission as are all pictures here]

Another nurse came to insert an IV line that would be used by another nurse about 30 minutes later to insert an antibiotic. I was able to stay with my wife up until 7:40 AM when another nurse came into the room to tell me it was time to take her into the operating room (O.R). The doctor never came in which surprised me a little bit. I learned later that he did offer to speak to my wife just before the surgery to answer any last minute questions.

I was given a piece of paper to track the status of my wife on the surgical waiting room area the floor above. On the paper were different status showing:

yellow - pre-surgery
black - on time
green - in O.R
dark blue - close
medium blue - in recovery
pale blue - to floor
purple - delayed
orange - cancelled
red - add-on

Taking the elevator to floor six, I identified myself to the elderly volunteer behind the desk and she told me I was welcome to have some free cookies, coffee or water and have a seat. The surgical waiting room area was spacious and with comfortable seats. Plenty of outlets and tables. Hanging from the ceiling were LCD monitors showing the status and tracking numbers of “cases” which is the hospital’s way of saying surgeries pending, in progress or completed. For privacy purposes, there are no names of patients displayed, only the tracking number given to the waiting family member.

I spotted my wife’s number 313400 and saw she was in yellow “pre-surgery” just as it was supposed to be. Just before 8am, as scheduled the color changed to green indicating she was in the O.R.

Internet surgery too
In a prior discussion, the doctor had indicated the surgical procedure would take about two hours and then my wife would be in recover for an hour or two, so I knew I had at least three hours to wait. I decided to try and tap into the internet.

There were two open, unsecured WiFi signals broadcasting, one labeled “Public” and another “MHS Public.” The Public one was 4 out of 5 bars so I connected to that one. No internet. At first I thought it might be my setting, but it wasn’t. I went to the desk and asked the volunteer woman if she knew anything about the internet and she threw her hands up and shook her head.

Getting on the free WiFi apparently isn’t a big priority for patients waiting in the surgical waiting room. I suppose I could have gone over and watched the 25″ TV with a few other people but I was determined to try and connect to the web and catch up on my reading.

Since the volunteer had no idea she dialed a gentleman downstairs named Ray who talked to me briefly on the phone and said he’d be right up. He looked at my computer screen saw that I was connected to Public and then dialed the network guy.

He told me that the connection I needed to use was “MHS Public.”
“But there is only one bar.”
“Move around,” he replied, “Those walls are made of led.”

And so began my expedition around the waiting room, from outlet to outlet, plugging in, powering up and checking for a better signal. None. If you’re wondering why I didn’t use the battery the answer is it’s still in the box, unpacked. I also didn’t bring a network cable, doh! Word of advice to those heading with a loved one: charge your laptop battery and bring a network cable.

Bottom line the signal was way too weak to do anything in the waiting room. I went back to the table where I had talked to the network guy on the phone and fired up Windows Live Writer and worked on a draft for a blog post. Not this one, and not anything to do with the hospital or surgery. I may post that later today.

Around 10:15 AM the color on the tracking monitor changed to dark blue (”close”) and the volunteer told me she would put in a consultation room to wait for the doctor to come and talk to me. There were four consulation rooms and I sat in the more private room waiting.

And waiting. 10:30. 10:45.

Other doctors arrived to speak to their patient’s families in the other room but my wife’s doctor didn’t come.

Around 10:55 the volunteer came to the front of the room to tell me that the doctor was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. I moved quickly to the phone and the first thing the doctor said was: “Everything went well, she is in recovery and will be there for an hour or — hold on.”

My heart froze.

“She will be in room 422,” He said non-chalantly. What a terrible time for a pause.

And that was it. No other conversation. No other here is what you should expect to happen. That was it. I stood there for a moment kind of dumbfounded. Not sure what to do next. I couldn’t go visit my wife in the recovery as that area is off limits to family and visitors.

The volunteer told me that after 15 minutes my wife’s tracking number would disappear from the monitor above. Then it would be more waiting until she told me that my wife was transferred to a room where I could go visit her. That was still at least an hour away.

By this time my stomach was protesting. I told the volunteer I’d be downstairs getting something to eat and be back in a little while. The hospital cafeteria had surprisingly good food. I got a beef melt with a soda, pickle, piece of string cheese and a caesar salad with chicken.

About 75% of the way through eating I decided to try the internet in this location. Turns out I was able to get three solid bars and connect right away.

Blocked by Surf Control
I visited this site first and was met with a “Blocked by Surf Control” message. Argh. I visited a few of our other sites. A couple were blocked like my personal site tdavids.com but not tdscripts.com or our PHP site.

Ultimately, I used vtunnel.com to route around the Surf Control filters, but I never found out why they were blocking Hmm. I couldn’t find any blogspot blogs that were blocked by surf control and yet this site is being blocked? There are some very adult blogspot blogs that I could view just fine and Surf Control didn’t bat an eye. Don’t you love the accuracy of filtering?

If any readers know how to find out why you are being blocked by Surf Control and appeal the block please let me know. I don’t think this blog should be filtered from view at a hospital. There is no porn here and in fact, very little profanity. Pictures? Nothing out of the ordinary. I would rate this blog rated PG 13 and maybe in a small few cases Rated R. Certainly not X. I’m saving that for nakedyougohmm, should we ever do that one. Surf Control is welcome and encouraged to filter that domain, but I’m not sure what they don’t like about this one. Any ideas?

Anyway, the vtunnel proxy got me around to be able to see a few had commented on yesterday’s post (thank you, again), but I didn’t want to login through a proxy to leave a comment so I left it go. The domain where I have reblog installed for reading RSS feeds was also blocked so that rendered my online RSS reading handicapped. Guess that’s a good reason to install your RSS reader on a domain that doesn’t have other public content. Another sign that web-based services can be easily disrupted. It’s a good thing I didn’t actually need to access any of these things.

Gift time
After lunch and surfing the web for a little while seeing what sites were and weren’t being filtered I didn’t want my wife to come out of surgery and see me without having some kind of gift, so I stopped by the gift shop (of which there were several) and summoned the services of a fluffy.

Out of recovery
I headed back to the surgery waiting area and checked in with the volunteer. This was around 11:30am PST. She indicated that my wife was still in recovery. I figured she would be out soon, so I went over to the group watching the TV. Divorce Court was just finishing up followed by The People’s Court.

Being without TV 57 days I was not that interested in the TV. It was more of a temporary distraction than anything. I kept checking my watch, wondering what was happening.

12:00, 12:15, 12:20, 12:25. Finally at 12:30 I’d had enough and I stood up and went to see the volunteer. There had been a shift change and the new volunteer, also a nice elderly woman, said she didn’t know I was waiting and had just received word that my wife was being moved from recovery to room 422.

Excitedly, I moved down the hall to the elevator to go down two floors and locate room 422. At At the very end and corner of the hospital was room 422 and I moved around the corner expecting to see my wife.

Empty bed.

I went out to the nurse’s section, this had to be around 12:35 or so and asked about her. They confirmed she was coming down from the recovery area and told me I could wait in the empty room. Instead, I decided to wait at the other end of the hall near the elevators so I could watch her being wheeled to the room.

More waiting. Waiting.

Around 1pm she was pushed out of the elevator, still in bed with a neck brace. The man pushing her past me was Ray from earlier. He remembered me and asked if I ever got on the internet. I said, yes, and thanked him for his help again. Then I followed him down the hall and paused at the nurse’s station while they readied my wife and told me I could enter.

One of the first things I heard her say was: “I want to go home. When can I go home?” The nurses asked her about pain on a scale from 0 to 10 (worst). She said she was at zero. What a trooper.

Another minute or two passed and I was allowed to enter the room and see her.

Waiting for permission to go home in room 422
My wife had planned to be the first surgery of the day so that she could go home, barring any unforseen complications or problems of course. The only snag seemed to be that the anesthesia affected her a bit strong and she was a little woozie at first. That passed within the first hour of being in room 422.

She drank water and ate some chocolate pudding and told me of feeling some small discomfort in her neck. She hadn’t taken any pain medication yet although the nurse did come in and give her a slight dose. A physical therapy nurse came in and showed her how to do some neck exercises. She needed to do those 2-3 times a day. She also ordered that my wife get up and walk around the hall every 60-90 minutes. I walked with her, holding the IV they still had attached.

One of the nurses kept coming in and putting stickers on a piece of paper with bar codes. I’m guessing those were billing codes. My wife thinks it will take about a week for the bills to start arriving for the services rendered.

Again, to my surprise, the doctor never checked in on her. Nice guy. He made $15,000 for conducting the two hour surgical procedure and saying a dozen or so words to me. He never checked in personally with his patient afterwards and the follow-up appointment in two weeks isn’t even with him, but his assistant. My wife doesn’t remember him showing up in the recovery room either. Not even a phone call to room 422 this time.

Before she could go home the doctor wanted another dose of antibiotics administered, of which he gave that order directly to the nurses (by phone, I assume). She got that and around 5:30pm we received discharge papers. I went down, retrieved the car and the nurse brought my wife downstairs in the wheelchair. I helped her into the car and we drove off almost exactly 12 hours after we’d arrived.

Summary
All in all the surgery experience in 2006 went positively. The tracking procedure sort of reminded me a bit of flight organization at an airport. I was clearly disappointed with her doctor not taking even five minutes to show she was anything more than a procedure but I’m very grateful to him that the procedure went smoothly. My wife is still feeling a little groggy and more pain today as was expected is coming on. We won’t know for awhile if this surgery cleared up her back, shoulder and neck pain although so far the only pain she has is in her neck and it hurts to swallow. I bought her some soup and have rallied our boys in the need to help their mother.

Now the healing process begins.

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