Wednesday, January 28

My wonderful "bed"-->

Surgery Part II

This morning, Sou woke me up asking to remove the pillows from under his ankles. It was 7am. They were about to bring him down to the operating room any minute now. Sou was wide awake compared to last night. All the morphine and fentanyl had worn off.  When they got him rolling down the hall, I followed them to the elevators. I told him that I was going to go to the bathroom to brush my teeth, then head downstairs to get some breakfast. After breakfast, I sat around in Sou's room for a couple of hours. By 11am, I figured the surgery would be over. I walked downstairs to the surgery waiting room. The guy at the desk had to make a couple of phone calls to find out where Sou was. He sent me over to the Surgery Pavilion. The lady at that front desk said Sou was coming out of surgery and that the surgeon would be out to talk to me. I sat on a cushioned bench, against the wall in front of her. As I watched the traffic of patients signing in for their surgery, I realized she was just as busy as a First Care MR on a crazy day. There was always people in line waiting to sign in. The whole sign in process had paperwork, contact info, and insurance stuff. I didn't want to keep bugging her so I sat and waited. After about an hour and a half, I decided to head up to Sou's room.  I figured in the end, that's where he'll be. Not even 10 minutes went by when Sou's nurse came in with some chux and some IV tubing. She told me that Sou was on his way back up. It was almost 1pm so I got on the phone and ordered his lunch. 

A few minutes later, they rolled Sou in. He was super de duper drowsy. Once the nurses left Sou was knocked out. I used this time to read one of my textbooks so I wouldn't fall behind in class. Later on, this dude from physical therapy showed up. He did several leg exercises with Sou to help him move around in bed and sit up. Not long after, my mom arrived. She hung out for a little bit. After making a big deal about the recall on peanut butter, she ate my bag of nutter butter. Sou's lunch arrived (clam chowder, fruit cup, dinner roll, and a caesar salad. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and buttered his dinner roll. He not quite ready to eat because he was waiting for the nurse and the therapist to leave. I was low on conditioner and body wash and asked my mom if she could bring me to the grocery store down the street. We went to some store I hadn't heard of. I think it was "FQC", TQF", or something. I can't remember. When I came back from the store, Sou was snoring hard. I guess he was still drugged from the surgery. His food was still untouched next to his bed. I figured that this was a good time to take my shower. I grabbed my bathroom stuff and went upstairs. When I walked back into Sou's room, his bed was empty. I was kind of startled because he hadn't gotten out of bed since friday. I noticed his bathroom door was open and the light was on. He was finally going to the bathroom. Yaaay!!! Took long enough. I hit the nurse call light so she could bring him some gauze and stuff. She came in and helped Sou back into bed. I read more of my textbook for a while. I was kind of refreshing to read something not related to action potentials, the autonomic nervous system, or cranial nerves. 

Later, we watched a couple episodes of Dog the Bounty Hunter. Then we began watching one of the movies that Mark brought us. About half way through the movie, Sou fell asleep. I decided to pause it because he would be bummed if I watched it without him. Sometime later, the nurse came into the room and took Sou's vitals.  I noticed that she didn't bring in his chemo. I asked if they were still doing it. She said they decided to stop his treatment for right now. When were they going to tell me this? I remember Sou asking me in the morning if he got his chemo. I couldn't remember. It turns out, his treatment was stopped a couple of days ago. The nurse said it was due to his infection and said something was also going on with his heart. Something's going on with his heart but I was never informed. I'm here most of the time with Sou and I didn't remember them mentioning that either. So much for "8 days left of chemo".