Long Day

Yesterday my mom went in for surgery for her back. She has had back and hip problems for years now, but finally decided to get it taken care of. The surgery involves putting in a metal bar and hardware to decompress some of the vertebrae. She had to get to the hospital at 5:30am with surgery at 7:30. I wake up yesterday thinking that if I get there around 6:00ish I would have a chance to visit before she goes in. Also, I try to drag out what time I leave the house hoping that the sound of the shower and me leaving the house won't wake the kids up. NOPE. As soon as I walk down the hall William wakes up and won't go back to sleep. I figure the more I argue with him the better chance of waking up his brother so I take him downstairs. Jen isn't too happy to see him awake at 6:00am either. So I grab my stuff and head out the door. Knowing the surgery will be 3 hours I threw together a backpack with a book and DVD player with movies. I head to the Orthopedic hospital of Parkview North in a pretty good snowstorm.... yes snow storm. Nothing sticking to the ground but depressing non the less. I am not real sure where to go and I drive toward a door for the Orthopedic center, but I noticed that when I turned it says "construction traffic only" and go through two red cones. I figure this is just the road they want the heavy machinery going down. As I drive down this "road" I feel the car drop around 8 inches into a dirt road. Oops. I turn around and head back to the main drag (of course hitting the back bumper on the now eye level curb). I finally get to the hospital and see my brother and uncle in the waiting room where they are waiting while they prep mom some more. So a little bit of visiting and she is wheeled away for surgery around 7:00. She tells me that her doctor's name is McGee so I am planning on seeing an Irishman or Scott and was a little surprised to see a black doctor. He's the best in Fort Wayne, I just assumed with the last name of McGee he would look different. So mom gets wheeled into Surgery and we go out to the waiting room. With 3 hours to kill I figure I can sneak away and help Jen take the Jeep to be serviced, so I take off. That was quite the adventure to get all the kids together and arranged while Jen took her shower and then drive across town, drop the Jeep off, transfer car seats, and drive across town again. You would think that 3 hours would be enough, but it wasn't. On a side note: Odaniel's called Jen with a laundry list of repairs for the Jeep that totalled near $3000 to fix everything. I told her to have stuff fixed that would pose a safety risk and we will go looking for a new minivan this weekend, crap. That was a task we were going to try and put off until later next year. Anyway I get back to the hospital and my brother and uncle are already back talking to the doctor so I walk into the room just as they are walking out...crap... But good news everything went as expected and the surgery took less time than expected. He told us it would be another 3 hours in recovery and she would get moved up into a room. So my Uncle took off to grab something to eat and take care of the dogs and my brother took off to go to a job interview. I pulled out the portable DVD player and watched a little bit of a RUSH concert then changed over to Ghostbusters. My uncle showed back up and we watched the movie on the player. At around 4 hours after surgery (an hour past the time she should be in a room) I decided to start asking what was going on. The told us that she lost alot of blood and if her blood pressure stayed the same she would be moved to a room, but if it went lower she would be moved to ICU. So I go and talk to this old guy working the patient desk. He is a slow lumbering old guy. I just called him "lurch". He told us that all he knew she was still in recovery. About 2 minutes later he comes up to us and tells us she is in her room. Either it was a coincidence that I had just asked or someone forgot to tell Lurch. So we go up and mom is pretty out of it. She wakes up a couple times to talk to us and have us call her friends to tell her about the surgery. Dan and I just spent the next 4 hours up in her room talking and watching TV while mom napped with her "Magic Button" medicine dispenser next to her. Dan and I did run across the street for dinner at Culvers which was good but expensive. I took off around 8 to go home and help put the boys to bed. Of course I came home to find out that Andrew has just puked all over the place so Jen had to clean that. Put the boys down, played on the computer, and went to bed. It was a long day, but mom seems to be doing pretty good. Now the long road to rehab and alot of crying and pain for her, but hopefully it will make her feel better in the long run.