Eight Days: Day Five, Surgery Day

First, I want to apologize for how long it has taken me to post this. The whole hospital trip was a nightmare, I thought just going through it was hard but re-living it and trying to write out my feelings about it has been even more difficult. I know that I don't have to put this out there and there is no need to make such a personal experience public, but I'm really struggling to get past this event and Andy and I firmly believe that writing it out will help me get over it, so let's get on with it, shall we?

Day five was surgery day, was a day of waiting. Waiting for them to take him to pre-op, waiting for them to take him to surgery, waiting for him to get out of surgery and waiting to be able to see him. Andy and I had decided that I would go to work that morning and work until he called to tell me they were going to take him down to pre-op. Every single person at worked asked why the heck I was there, but the truth was I was grateful to be doing something to occupy my mind. At around noon my parents called to let me know they were in town. I decided at that point I needed to leave, I was too distracted to be of much help at work. It worked out well because Andy called on my way to meet my parents to let me know they would be taking him to pre-op in an hour or so. I met my parents at the house and we decided to grab some lunch before we went to the hospital.

We got to the hospital around 1:20 and were there for about 10 minutes before they came to take him to pre-op. We were directed to the waiting room, where I was given some information and a pager thing (like the ones you get in a restaurant) that would buzz anywhere in the hospital when he was out of surgery. Once they got Andy settled in pre-op we were allowed to go and sit with him until he went back. This turned into a nearly five hour wait. It was ridiculous and nerve-racking. Luckily enough I had my iPad so it helped us pass the time, but it was so frustrating to not know when he would be going. Barb (Andy's mom) arrived around 5:00 and joined in the never-ending wait. Eventually the doctor came to speak with us about the surgery. The basic idea was that they were going to go in laprascopically and see if it really was Meckel's, then depending on the size of the inflammation they would remove it laprascopically but if it was too inflamed they would have to open him up. Obviously we were hoping for the former, which takes less recovery time, but there was no way to know until they were in there.

Around 7:00PM they took him back to surgery and all that we could do was wait. My parents ventured out to check on the dogs and grab us all some dinner. After about an hour and fifteen minutes the surgeon came in to let us know everything had gone perfectly, they had gotten the Meckel's out through a small incision in his abdomen and he would be sent back to his room in a little while. My parents had to head home a little after this, so Barb and I waited for word on when he would be moved to his room. This wait wasn't too long, though we were the last group in the waiting room for the night. We had actually decided to move out of the waiting room so the cleaning people could get in there when the phone rang to let us know he was going up to his room.

Seeing Andy after surgery was hard because he was in a lot of pain and very uncomfortable, but I was so happy that we were over the hump. I thought once the surgery was done everything was going to be downhill (for the most part it was), we had gotten through a really difficult thing and while he was still going to have to get through recovery, I didn't feel so worried anymore. We didn't stay too long with Andy because he was uncomfortable, in pain, and tired, plus it was going on 11:00. We headed back to the house and I actually got to have a pretty decent nights sleep.