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SOGP's surgery.
Feb. 15th, 2014 02:56 pmI just realized I never mentioned Lorne's surgery & recovery. He is so well-recovered now that I have mostly completely forgotten that he was unwell or had surgery or anything.
Surgery happened two days before his birthday (mid October). We got him to the UBC hospital for 7:00 am and they prepped him until 9:30 am when they took him in. I counted 8 different people who (a) asked him when he had last eaten, and (b) asked him if he knew what he was there for.[1] There was the main hospital receptionist, the department receptionist, the prepping nurse, the doctor, the intern, the anesthesiologist, the nurse who gave him medication, and the nurse who took him away to surgery.
They were expecting him to be awake again around noon or 1:00, but he didnt' wake up until around 3:30 - and only because they were trying to get him out of there so they could close shop for the day. We had had some busy times (cat in emergency on the long weekend CDN Thanksgiving, + family visiting + yadda yadda) during the week running up to the surgery, and I think he wasn't over-drugged, but simply sleep-deprived.
He had one week of quite a lot of discomfort, and then he started to feel better. My family filled him with scare stories about my uncle and a family friend who both had the same surgery and didn't pay attention to needing quite a lot of time to heal properly and so had to each have their surgeries again - so he was very good about patiently waiting for improvement.
He had the surgery on both sides, and has healed so well. For a while there, while he was waiting for surgery, he became a very old man (and he was hitting birthday # 65 this year & retiring) because he felt he would never feel strong again. He is now very strong and quite a young man again. As I say - for days at a time I forget that he was ever ill.
So, bad things happen, occasionally, but by and large, Canada's medical system works and works well. People trying to dismantle it or weaken it need to be staked through the heart like the wicked vampires they are.
[1] - sometime during this past year a woman was given a double mastectomy when she had gone in for something completely different, so I suspect all these questions were both a double-check and a reassurance that they cared to be doing the right operation.
Surgery happened two days before his birthday (mid October). We got him to the UBC hospital for 7:00 am and they prepped him until 9:30 am when they took him in. I counted 8 different people who (a) asked him when he had last eaten, and (b) asked him if he knew what he was there for.[1] There was the main hospital receptionist, the department receptionist, the prepping nurse, the doctor, the intern, the anesthesiologist, the nurse who gave him medication, and the nurse who took him away to surgery.
They were expecting him to be awake again around noon or 1:00, but he didnt' wake up until around 3:30 - and only because they were trying to get him out of there so they could close shop for the day. We had had some busy times (cat in emergency on the long weekend CDN Thanksgiving, + family visiting + yadda yadda) during the week running up to the surgery, and I think he wasn't over-drugged, but simply sleep-deprived.
He had one week of quite a lot of discomfort, and then he started to feel better. My family filled him with scare stories about my uncle and a family friend who both had the same surgery and didn't pay attention to needing quite a lot of time to heal properly and so had to each have their surgeries again - so he was very good about patiently waiting for improvement.
He had the surgery on both sides, and has healed so well. For a while there, while he was waiting for surgery, he became a very old man (and he was hitting birthday # 65 this year & retiring) because he felt he would never feel strong again. He is now very strong and quite a young man again. As I say - for days at a time I forget that he was ever ill.
So, bad things happen, occasionally, but by and large, Canada's medical system works and works well. People trying to dismantle it or weaken it need to be staked through the heart like the wicked vampires they are.
[1] - sometime during this past year a woman was given a double mastectomy when she had gone in for something completely different, so I suspect all these questions were both a double-check and a reassurance that they cared to be doing the right operation.
