So this week is Thanksgiving! We celebrated with a beautiful meal and everything was wonderful. We had family over and after the meal watched a local football team.
It reminded me that family and friends are such an important part of life. It is always the memories we make and our new experiences that give us freedom to be with other people and handle different situations.
I have had a history of surgeries occurring the week before Thanksgiving. Last time I had major cancer surgery and my wife spent Thanksgiving in a waiting room. But in the earlier surgery she had a period of time when I was not in the normal recovery protocol and one of the alternatives was that I could have been dead. This was not a good time for her as she searched for me. She had to become her own patient advocate to make sure she was part of the information.
This time we went in more prepared. She stayed with me right up to the rolling me into the operating room - and that included the placement of the nerve block. We had asked that she be back with me as quickly as possible during recovery. Again the hospital 'lost' me. The doctor called to call the operation a success but she got no more information. I finished the operation and she waited and waited and waited. Again she had to step up as a patient advocate.
She was again in the recovery room but much quicker this time. We discussed this worked somewhat better but we still have further improvement in future times.
I always think it is critical that my experience be done uniquely so that the entire medical team does net get involved in 'just another routine procedure.'
So as I was starting to be wheeled out to the operating room Rachel turned right and I turned left. I couldn't help myself and I started barking as I went down the hallway. It just pops out. We passed some people who were looking at me with a questioning look. Then at one point we came upon a couple doctors in conversation. They were reviewing a procdedure on a clipboard.
Suddenly one of the doctors turned to face me and started to bark aggresively back at me with a territorial look in his body stance. He was marking his territory.
As we got on the other side of the two doctors the second doctor produced the beautiful sound of a fully functioning horse. I was speechless. The horse sounded so great and natural so that when I was wheeled into the operating room the charge nurse asked, "Was that a horse I just heard?" We told her the hallway sounded like a barnyard. The other nurse mentioned the doctor who barked was quite aggresive. I told where he might have been a terrier because they are so territorial.
In the end, my team performed my operation from a different kind of place more fully focused. It seemed like a closer bonding. It definitely was not routine. It was another grand adventure!
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