{"id":4384,"date":"2012-05-09T11:18:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T18:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettiesworld.com\/?p=4384"},"modified":"2017-06-28T23:01:15","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T06:01:15","slug":"the-road-to-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/?p=4384","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knowing that yesterday was going to be a long day, and one, as Bertie Wooster would say, fraught with imponderables, I asked Megan if she would be interested in accompanying me to the hospital – an invitation she eagerly accepted.<\/p>\n

We arrived around 7:30 and they had already begun part of the chemical stress test procedure she would be undergoing before the surgery.\u00a0 My personal opinion was that it should have been done the day before, as one stressful procedure in a day would seem more prudent, but what do I know, right?\u00a0 Anyway, off they took her shortly before 9, for what the transport guy said would be a 45 minute deal.\u00a0 By 11 I was beginning to worry that they would not have time to bring her back to the room before she had to go for surgery prep.\u00a0 I was also very curious as to why it would be taking so long, so I googled it, and found the Heartsite.com<\/a> which told me all I needed to know about cardiac stress tests, including the fact that they can take from 2-4 hours.\u00a0 Good to know!<\/p>\n

Not long after that another transport gal popped her head in the door and invited us both to come down to OR with her, as mom was being transferred directly there.\u00a0 We had a short wait in the very busy waiting area outside OR, and then they called us back.\u00a0 Poor mom was\u00a0 understandably in less than perky spirits after having just been put through the ringer.\u00a0 We did have fun chatting with the anesthesiologist, whose accent I couldn’t quite place until he told us he was originally from South Africa.\u00a0 We’ve had more international doctors here than not, including 2 from India, 1 from Africa, and 1 from somewhere in South America, possibly Brazil.\u00a0 Good thing I’ve been here to translate for mom, as the accents are a little tough for her to understand. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

A little before 1pm Dr. Brink, of Vascular Surgery Specialists<\/a>, came in to answer any last minute questions, mark which leg they were going to operate on (pretty obvious since it was the leg with the wound vac hooked up to the foot) and I found it interesting that he somehow managed to be reassuring even while acknowledging that this surgery was pretty high on the difficulty scale.\u00a0 We gave our hugs and kisses and set off for the cafeteria, where we set up our laptops and stayed for the next five hours.\u00a0 I can’t imagine getting through that afternoon without Megan here, she was more help and support than she knows.\u00a0 I had some good, laughter filled conversations with both Jeff (whose company had the unmitigated gall to have scheduled him to go to a conference in Atlanta this week) and Doug, in Moorhead… Megan says I was “slap-happy” – and surely that must be true, but it was good to just laugh some of the stress of waiting away.<\/p>\n

Megan added interest to her time here by taking the stairs whenever she needed to traverse floors – several trips from the 1st to the 5th floor and back, sometimes taking 2 steps at a time, gave her a vigorous workout, and an excuse to eat some pudding from the cafeteria. \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 (It’s good pudding.\u00a0 My excuse was not nearly so good.)\u00a0 She’s a big\u00a0 inspiration to me, and I’ll be hiring her soon as my personal trainer.\u00a0 She’s also becoming very interested in a career somewhere in the medical profession, which is quite exciting!<\/p>\n

Right at 5:30 on the dot, I got a phone call from Dr. Brink informing me of the good news: the surgery was successful, mom had done very well throughout, was looking stable, and we could see her in about an hour and a half.\u00a0 Well, by the time we found ICU, the floor was closing for an hour as they do between 7-8 both morning and night so the nurses can coordinate all their information on their patients.\u00a0 So Megan and I had another hour to kill, and we wandered between floors, taking the stairs some, and ended up relaxing in the lobby for another 30 minutes, where we realized we could have spent a much more comfortable (and quieter) afternoon than we did in the cafeteria… next time, we’ll know…<\/p>\n

At last it was 8pm and we were able to come into ICU and see mother.\u00a0 She was groggy, in some pain, and at that point just taking ice chips.\u00a0 By the time left, she was a little more alert, and about to partake of some jello, so things were moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n

This morning, to my shock and delight, when I walked into her room, she was just being helped off the bed and into an arm chair, where she then proceeded to sit up and eat her breakfast. She was so perky and energetic I couldn’t believe it – I don’t remember the last time she had that much vim and vigor!\u00a0 What a huge relief after all that she’s been through in the last month, and the last two weeks especially.\u00a0 So, so very thankful for God’s grace and the healing touch of her physicians.<\/p>\n

Hopefully we’ll have a better picture of her the ongoing road to recovery by the end of the week, but if today is any indication, things are looking very positive indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knowing that yesterday was going to be a long day, and one, as Bertie Wooster would say, fraught with imponderables, I asked Megan if she would be interested in accompanying me to the hospital – an invitation she eagerly accepted. We arrived around 7:30 and they had already begun part of the chemical stress test […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,49,598],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-health","category-netties-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4384"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4388,"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384\/revisions\/4388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.adoptedjoy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}