2geonomads

Friday 22nd Feb.

The old man is a wee bit pre-occupied today so thought I’d pop in to make a quick comment on behalf of myself and mum. It was apparently a poor night’s sleep for dad due mainly to over-enthusiastic air-conditioning (and quite possibly his imminent evisceration). As the rest of us were tossing and turning through a night that only briefly dipped below 26C this didn’t elicit quite as much as sympathy as he’d probably hoped. He wasn’t particularly impressed that frantic button presses through the night didn’t bring nurses running with blankets but given he was wired up to more telemetry than the space shuttle they probably took one look at his read-outs and decided they had more important things to worry about. True to form I overslept but mum was there by 9:45am and I managed to follow an hour later. Although the operation was (is?) scheduled for 1pm, I cut it very fine and by the time I got there he had already had 2x ‘happy pills’ (nurse’s nomenclature) and some morphine. I only had 20min with a progressively soporific and visibly stoned father before the orderlies came into wheel him off to the theatre (approx an hour ahead of schedule). There was one high point when we talked about the breathing exercises he’d had with the physiotherapist and he pulled out the triple rotameter and demonstrated with great pride being able to eventually lift all three balls (to mum’s escalating  verbal protestations (and my silent egging on)). This might be a sign of things to come. Given my dad has always treated his body as something to be hammered into submission by sheer force of will, I’m a bit worried following this op, it might decide to do some hammering back. Perhaps it might be prudent for us to invest in a straightjacket to ensure compliance with the surgeon’s post-op ‘rest’ instructions :).

Anyway he’s in there now. We have upmost confidence in the competence of the medical staff. And we’re now just ticking down the moments until we get the call that they’ve successfully put him back together (Better! Stronger! Faster!) and we can head over to visit him in the ICU ward.

Craig and Gail