It has been a very long day!
I shouldn't complain, I'm not the one who had surgery, but sometimes I think I'd prefer to be the one sleeping!
Tim had to undergo surgery, once again, to repair another Incisional Hernia, that developed along the incision from the first Surgery!
I think today was the sixth time, in as many years, that he has been the guest of honor at an OR gathering.
I am getting to know the waiting area really well.
We went down at 9:30 this morning. Paula was going to take the boys for the morning and Nina was to pick them up this afternoon.
What a blessing to know that they are in such good hands. I didn't have to worry about them all day, so I had all that time to worry about Tim!
When we got there he needed another EKG for the anesthesiologist and they did all the prep.
I was chased out of the prep area for a bit, but got back in to be with him until they wheeled him down. Then I had to go to the family waiting room for an hour and a half!
It's so strange to see family members coming and going. They stop in and check on the progress of the patient and then go about their business until they can go up to the floor where the patient will be staying after the recovery room.
How do they do that?
I can not leave that waiting room. I know the pattern of the carpet by heart. I can't read, because nothing makes sense except that the best part of me is on the other side of a mere wall, where he is asleep, and someone is carefully putting something right, but using lethal tools to do it with. I have never felt so powerless and so totally dependent on the Grace of God, as when I am waiting for the moment when I can touch him again and feel the warmth of his hands and hear the reassuring beeps coming from all the monitors.
When he was so sick, almost six years ago now, and he had to go in the first time, Dr Canlas did not know what he was going to find.
I remember so well that wait. The wait to hear what was going to happen to the rest of my life.
"An obstruction", "A blockage". We all know what comes to mind when we hear those words. And I remember so well the incredible feeling that came over me when Dr C came to me and told me that Tim was not out of danger, was still very sick, but that we would not be looking at Chemo, treatments, and probably losing him. I was carrying our youngest son.
That wait to hear what they have had to do to your best friend in the whole world.
It brings you to the feet of Christ. It makes you curl up in the arms of your Mother and beg her to ask her Son for another lifetime. It also makes you realize that if it is His Will to bring him home, you will have to be able to find some way to go on.
These are all things I have contemplated in that waiting room. They are things that many people must have turned over and over in that small space. It has seen many, many life changing moments.
We have been so Blest that our lives have been Graced by healing. The words that have been spoken to me at that door have always brought relief.
I pray for the families that have not received such words.
Dear Doctor Canlas has always been so understanding of my needs, as well as what he has to do for Tim.
He always hugs me, tells me not to worry and that he will come and get me as soon as it is over.
And he always finds a way to get me into the recovery room, instead of making me wait up on the floor. Then I can see and hear what I have been waiting for.
Today was a pretty easy one as days like this go. We were able to leave the recovery room within the hour after he came out, and were ready to go home by about 4:00.
Dr Canlas said that it took a bit longer because it was a little more involved than he thought. He found a couple of surprises, one being a scar on Tim's lower left side that Tim can't account for. Dr Canlas says it isn't one of his!
Hmmm...
Maybe Steve will remember something.
So I am sitting here appreciating my husband and my home and praying that all of this is behind us! It will be nice having Tim around for the next week or two. He has to rest but between John and Monopoly and Paul and his Chess board, I doubt he'll run out of things to occupy him!
Come to think of it, he may opt to go back to work early...
