Joe's Bar and Grill

The surgery is now behind us -- five hours in in the operating room and two hours in recovery.  He's in a lot of pain, which is only to be expected.  I know that the next few days are going to be probably the toughest for him, but, on my end, the hardest is part is hopefully behind me: waiting for five hours for word of how he was faring was difficult.  But that part is over now...

The whole hospital experience has an additional element of backwards deja-vu because this is where I had my own emergency surgery for my ovarian cancer four years ago.  Having now experienced both sides of this coin first hand, I can definitively say that being the one anxiously sitting in the waiting room is the more stressful position to be in.  I'm not sure if Bruce would agree with me right this second, but I'm sure of it.  Just say'n!

One element of my wait was both surreal and funny.  At five o'clock, the waiting room receptionist was off duty and no one appears to man the desk at night.  So she put the phone on the counter, along with the number to reach the recovery room and told all of us to answer the phone if it rang.  And then she said goodnight and left.  By this time, there were only about six groups of people waiting.  Every time the phone would tootle, one of us would march over and answer it.  We took turns.  The person holding the phone would turn to the rest of us and ask something like, "Is the family of Lucinda here?"  Someone from Lucinda's family would rush over to take the phone and talk with a doctor or nurse in Recovery while the rest of us settled back to wait.  One gentleman finally answered the phone by saying, "Joe's Bar and Grill.  May I help you?"  Naturally, that was the long-awaited call for me to come back into Recovery to see Bruce. Figures.

Anyway, I made it home by nine-thirty, fed the starving hordes, wrote out substitute plans for class today and slept a wonderful, deep sleep.  Today the sun shines and the Frogpond crew is in high spirits.

I'm now off to the hospital again.  Poom's in charge (heaven help us!)