3:00 AM up and getting dressed
4:00 AM out the door and on the turnpike
6:00 AM Arrive at the hospital
6:30 AM Seeing the intake person filling out my paperwork
7:00 AM In a room, getting into a paper gown, peeing in a dixie cup, meeting the nursing aide, nurse, Dr. Nausbaum and the anestesiaologist
7:45 AM Being wheeled into surgery. This should take 90 minutes for surgery then time for the post surgery testing to make sure there are no leaks.
9:30 I just got called to the information desk. One of the surgery nurses told me Anna got held in line. They had a surgical emergency and she got bumped.
10:12 AM I just got called to the information desk again. Anna is done surgery. everything went well. The doctor is now doing the testing and it will be a a while for that to finish. After that. if there is no leakage. she will go to recovery
3:30 PM Finally got settled into the room. It is a step down unit, Anna is banging away on the morphine pump and has some back pain. On the scale of 1 to 10, 1 being it hurts a little, 5 it hurts a lot and 10 it is hurting Jim in any way shape or form, she is saying it is a 5. But she keeps dozing back to sleep. The orders for today are bed rest, nothing to eat or drink, bed pan no getting out of bed, and blowing into the ball game toy thing 10 times every hour.
A day in the life of Anna Skamarakas