Hospital Blog 1 :No Plan Survives an Encounter with the Enemy

 What just happened?

I just re-read  my previous blog from almost a month ago. We are no longer in the queue for the dead drop or the roller coaster but we are definitely still on a ride.  Forgive me if fragments of this blog seem familiar.  I have been communicating piecemeal by WhatsApp, email and a very few phone calls.  
So we expected that Al would have a bypass operation on 15 or 16 February.  He was ready to go both days, then cancelled out mid-afternoon, when it became clear that there was no space in the schedule.  We were resigned to the idea that it could be another week of waiting, since that what was what we had previously gleaned from the cardiologists.  But then Al was told that he needed to prepare by fasting in case there could be an ‘emergency’ operation on Thursday 17th.  Another day with no breakfast.  I went in, I think in the morning, not even sure now.  Al was very quiet and I went out around lunchtime to get a fresh Covid test (necessary every 48 hours for visiting).  I must have come back around 1430 or so.  More sitting around quietly, somehow not much to say.  Sometime in the morning α very young looking anaesthetist came with a clipboard and a lot of questions.  I could see that Al was a bit taken aback by her youth and seeming inexperience.  By 1500 it was still not clear what, if anything, was going to happen, but at around 1530 a young nurse (they mostly seem quite young - I think that is our perspective) came with a set of disposable clothes for Al to put on, and said something about seeing the anaesthetist.  She explained in mime what went where, and left us to it.  There were some tiny expandable sort of short shorts - a bit like elastic Sloggies that almost made us laugh.  Maybe a bit.  I think I asked Al if he was nervous, and he said yes, a bit.  Or that may have been later.
A short time after, a porter came in to move Al and the bed down to the operating level.  So this was really happening. We went down, all together, Al, the bed, the porter and me.  On the first floor we went down a long corridor, through security doors and the bed was placed next to a kind of open bed-sized serving hatch.  The intention was clearly to deliver Al onto the other side.  We had a few moments and I can’t really remember what we said.  I think I might have asked him if he was frightened and reminded him that he would know nothing until he woke up in the ICU.  He worried the anaesthetic might not work.  I told him it would be fine.  Then the ‘real’ anaesthetist appeared, reassuringly mature, and she whipped me round a corner to give me ‘the talk’.  This is when she reminds me of how serious the operation is, that it could affect any of the body’s vital organs etc.  And please print your name and sign here.  I printed my name but I am almost sure that I didn’t sign anything.  She left and I followed but the wall had eaten Al up and I think even the bed had gone.  I was in a complete daze.  I passed back through the one-way doors and had no idea where I was.  It took a couple of goes to find the way out.  I think I went out and sat in the hospital garden for a while. 

 It was 1615 when he went in, and the anaesthetist had warned me that it could be six or seven hours until Al would be delivered to the ICU.
 I thought that this was going to be the most difficult part.  I sat in the garden until it became cool, and also I wanted to be sure that the surgical staff could find me outside the ICU.  I made sure that our temporary host, Nick, could feed OC and settled down to wait opposite the lifts on the 4th floor. 

Sally Randle said that she would call while I was waiting, to help me pass the time, and it really did help, to be able to chat whilst the view outside grew darker.  Thank you Sally!
I had Al’s headphones and his iPad.  I forgot, after taking him to theatre floor, I had to go and pack up his things and take them to the carpark.  Of course I had to stop myself thinking that I was packing things away after a death.  Too familiar a feeling.  So I had his head phones and iPad.  I knew that he had been recording on the iPad - The Hospital Tapes - but I hadn’t heard any of the work.  So I listened.  And was really impressed by what I heard - Al writing in a completely new medium.  

Somewhere between 1930 and 2000 the same porter that has taken the bed earlier emerged from the ICU pushing a bed.  He said to me ‘it’s for your husband’.  At first that was reassuring then, as the minutes, and then hours passed by, not so much.  Why wasn’t he back?  

Finally at 2215 the lift doors opened and a trolley came out.  I had to move quickly to get a peek at the person lying there.  Hugely relieved to see that it was Al under all the tubes and bags and lines.  A man sitting opposite me, also waiting, put his thumbs up.  I was grateful to him for not speaking.
So at that point you kind of think it’s all over and we can now wander down the sweet path to recovery.  It wasn’t quite like that.

Skipping ahead, we are hoping to leave our small solar sanctuary today, and take a step along the path to ‘real life’ in Kissamos.  But I am not finished with the post-operative experience, and will pick that up in the next blog.

Written between 6 and 9 March, Amadoura