My family and I want to thank you for your support! It continues to be a difficult time. My wife has good and bad days, but she’s making progress. The physical therapist has made her last in-home visit. She suggested that we call the doctor to get a prescription for outpatient therapy.

I’d like to expand on my last post about what happened before and after my wife had her surgery. Here’s a recap:

• When it was time for my wife’s surgery, the doctor and his assistant came in to see us. I asked them where my daughter and I could wait. They told us they weren’t sure because of the COVID-19 concerns. I asked them what should we do? We wanted to be there when the surgery was finished. They told us to wait in the same small cold room and told us not to leave. They would call us. I made sure that the doctor and his assistant had my cell phone number. They assured us that they would call us.
• After 6 hours there was no call! My daughter and I were concerned that something went wrong. We needed to know what was going on! There wasn’t a single person on the entire floor to ask. I started to make random calls and found out that she was operated on 4 hours before and was in intensive care and doing well. We were able to talk to her. I’ll mention more about this in a future post. Was it asking too much for someone in the hospital to notify us when my wife’s surgery was completed?

As you can imagine, my daughter and I were extremely stressed during this time. We rushed to the hospital to see my wife before her surgery. We were nervous about what was going to happen to my wife. We hadn’t eaten. We were stuck in a small, cold room for 11 hours (5 hours before my wife went into surgery and 6 hours waiting for a result). We were concerned about our cats, Prissy age 19 and Charlie age 15 who have kidney disease and need to eat on a regular schedule.

How did we get through this stressful time? It’s a good thing that we both have a decent sense of humor! That was the key to our sanity! Also, it was helpful to have a bathroom that was close by. Being as cold as it was in the room, I knew that I couldn’t hold it in for the long time that we remained in the room.

There was a TV in the room. There were only 4 sports channels available. The first program we watched was called American Ninja Warrior. We’ve never seen it before, but it seemed interesting. It was about contestants with different body types navigating a seemingly impossible obstacle course. There was a time element involved to win the contest. My daughter and I were doing color commentary on the event. It was just like the sportcasters on TV. After much debate, my daughter was correct about the skinny guy winning the event. She reasoned that technique was more important than strength.

The next program we watched was called The Strongman Contest from Norway. It was about 4 burly men going through various strongman activites that ranged from lifting logs to carrying boulders to a finish line with a time element involved. The men all seemed to look alike and their names were Swen or Ole. The event seemed weird, but interesting. It took place in a blizzard and was very icy. There was a small group of people clapping with a guy beating a drum in the background. When it came time for the boulder contest, there was a man about half the size of the competitors that stood in the back of them so they wouldn’t fall carrying the boulder to the finish line. My daughter and I couldn’t understand it, but we had a good laugh and it killed some time.

As the time went on, it was getting late and we hadn’t eaten. We could hear our stomachs growling in unison. We decided to think about different food options when it was time for us to leave the hospital. It turned out that there weren’t any good food options.

It was 3 am and I finally decided that I needed to find out what was going on. I was furious what happened. Again, nobody contacted us! When we finally left the hospital, it was 4:30 am. We were exhausted and wanted to get home to feed our cats. That was another cause of major stress.

My daughter and I are reasonably intellegent people. We questioned each other about why we waited so long to find out what was happening. We reasoned that we were in a very critical area of the hospital, the surgical holding area that was right next to the operating room, during a pandemic and was told to stay where we we. We didn’t want to believe that nobody would contact us!

That’s why the room was so cold. We kept our facemasks on the whole time. This prevented us from having our noses fall off from frostbite!

I have a tendency to overthink things. Can any of you relate to this? I felt guilty that I didn’t properly prepare for our trip to the hospital. The outside temperature was pushing 100 degrees. My daughter and I wore light tee shirts, shorts, and sandles. Had I known what was to come, I would’ve packed a couple of sleeping bags, food, and wore clothing just like the burly men on The Strongmen of Norway contest!

How have you handled and survived a stressful situation? We did it by having a sense of humor! I’m interested in any thoughts or comments that you have. Stay tuned for further developments.

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