Hey, Ya'all!
The surgery was Tuesday, and was very successful, according to the doctor. I was out for it, so I'll let Carol tell some of the Tales from the Waiting Room....


' Tom, Teresa, (SO glad they came up to hang out with me...it made the wait much better!) and I were sent to the first floor waiting room, since the comfy second floor was being cleaned. We checked in with the desk lady, and were given a beeper so that we could go outside and around the grounds while we waited. The beeper was like one that you get at a nice restaurant. Cool, we thought.

So we proceeded to go get lunch at the on-premesis McDonalds, and then went to the second floor waiting room, where there were comfy chairs and lower light and fewer people. Knowing that we held the beeper, we were comfortable not being downstairs. Besides, the 2nd floor was open, and was just a balcony over the first floor. We could hear them call our name, we thought. Oh well, or we'd see the beeper go off...which we held in one of our hot little hands constantly.

We were wrong. We finally went down to the first floor and checked with the lady and seems she had called our name when the doctor asked to see us. Since we didn't show up, we didn't get the nice conversation in a private room with the surgeon. Confused, we asked the lady why our beeper didn't go off. (the beeper that assures us that we will be paged, so go ahead and roam around and stretch our legs.) The lady replied, "Well, they don't always work, so we don't bother to set them off." AUGH!!!!!

At that point, we asked her to page the doctor, and I sat right in front of her until we got word back...I let her know I wasn't leaving the area so we didn't miss the page. This cracked up Tom and Teresa, and they sent me all sorts of funny text messages.

The good news was, the surgery went well, and Teresa did get to talk to the doctor by phone. He was defensive of the lady right away, saying he heard the page, but I don't think the lady told him she didn't set off the pager, and we didn't want to make a very good surgeon mad, so we dropped it.

We were then invited back to recovery, since Mom didn't have a room yet, and they knew we wanted to see her. Teresa and I went to recovery, while Tom graciously watched our luggage. We stood on either side of the bed, and were eventually laughing...too loud. THEN they threw us out of Recovery...and we understood and left without a whimper.

Tom and Teresa took me out to supper, (thanks, guys!) and I took my spot in a chair in front of the beeper lady. We had a nice conversation, and I felt better about my bad heart attitude earlier. Even though she was very wrong, it didn't justify the things I felt in my own heart. :-)

Word finally came that Mom was in a room, and the funny thing is the lady said she had paged me three times and wondered why I hadn't answered my page. HA!!!! (truth was, I fell asleep and didn't hear her.)'

This is Grammy now. I'll try to remember what I can to tell you of the experience from my side of the bed. The word is "Pain." I was impressed by the care given to me by all those caregivers around me. the surgeon has a team of doctors that travel with him to visit his patients. But to digress....I need to tell you about the test they performed the morning of the surgery. After a couple of hours of rest, I was taken to the radiology department, where they did an injection of some kind of isotope. They wanted to try to see what was going on in the post gall bladder area. Very soon, following the test, they did the surgery. I was sent back to the recovery room, where my daughters became a little raucus, and were politely asked to leave.

About 9 pm, they told me that there was a room available on the 10th floorand I was moved to my room. there,were the first of the nurses and CP's and people who would care for me. I was hooked up once more to the morphine that I could press whenever I thought I needed it. they came in every couple of hours, checking vitals, and I met a lot of interesting people during that time period. A young woman came by that I had met the first night I was here, and had told her about my blog. We discussed the blog, and she told me how much she appreciated my expression of faith.

On each shift, there are 3 caregivers. I don't believe I've had the same ones yet, so they must rotate. Okay, maybe one group has already rotated. I'm continuing to improve each day, and although I am still on liquids, I have no doubt I'll soon be eating more solid foods. It's just a matter of time. I took myself off of the morphine, and I am now only occasionally using a pain pill as needed.

Today we went outside and I walked around with a walker in the pleasant air. It was beautiful. The sky was blue, the courtyard floor is red brick, and there are trees and flowers and gorgeous. Please note picure of me and my walker.

One of the interesting things is that we can see helicopters fly in with patients and fly out to pick up new patients. We can't actually see the helicopter land, except we can see the reflection of the building, because it lands on the roof above us. The building next to us is glass, and we can see the reflection of the helicopter across from us.

Well, that pretty much catches us up on events so far, and tomorrow I'll blog about what's going on for the next month in the lives of Grammy and Gramps.

This is Blabbin' Grammy signing off.