Thursday, June 21, 2007

Recovery

We’re home. Everything went great with Monsieur’s procedure. (Read here, here.)
The only bad thing was that we had to wait to get in. He had to be there at 8:30 to get the TEE ultrasound and it didn’t get done. The catheter part was scheduled for 1:30 pm, and it didn’t get started till 4:00 pm.
He was done in an hour, and a little while later the surgeon let me come in to the recovery area and see him.
He was doing fine. The nurses in the recovery room were on their laptops with not a lot to do, and apparently their system kept them from their favorite crossword puzzles. They said Monsieur walked them through hacking around the controls.
He must have been pretty far gone to do that, since he’s all about network security. But it does say something about his recovery time that he could keep it together well enough to show the nurses how to hack the network.
He also looked over at me and whispered, “You know, we should be married.”
I looked over at the nurse, who looked away.
“I know,” I said.
He closed his eyes.
“You know,” the nurse said, “when that anesthesia wears off, they say things that they might mean but might not remember.”
“Oh, you heard that, did you?” I said, with a little grin.
She grinned back. “I don’t hear anything that they say in here, know what I mean?”
He had to be monitored for a while. Since they started so late, that meant an over night stay. I asked him what he needed from the house, cause Grandfather was going to visit with the kids.
“Bring the Linux notebook, okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. But the surgeon said not to bother bringing his computer, as Monsieur needed rest and wouldn’t remember asking me for it anyway.
By the time he was totally awake, the kitchen was closed. I went down and got him a spinach salad (no bacon) somewhere. We watched old movies on TCM, which made me nostalgic for cable or satellite TV. It was nice.
His pulse and BP got checked by the automatic monitor every 30 minutes or so. He had little plastic things taped to his chest with wires coming out of them.
Grandfather and the boys called to say they were better off staying at home if everything is okay, which it was. He talked to all the boys and told the Bigglest Boy that he had telemetry sensors on his chest, just like the astronauts did on Apollo 13.
He tried calling some of the people that work for him at his office, but I had called ahead and told them to watch the caller ID and not to answer if it was him, or from the hospital phone. He needed to be still. Everyone followed my orders and no one answered. He left some voice mails.
He sat back and watched On Dangerous Ground, some Ida Lupino film noir. I nodded off in the reclined chair next to his bed.
Around 2 AM I opened my eyes. He was out of bed, and still, Ida Lupino was on the screen. “Is this still the same movie?” I asked, sleepily.
“No,” he said, “it’s Beware, My Lovely.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“This damnable BP cuff is inflating every 30 minutes, keeping me awake. I turned that off, but the alarm went off. I’m disabling the whole thing so I can get some sleep.”
“Oh,” I said. Then, “Are you sure you should be doing that?”
“If not, they can put it all back,” he said.
I didn’t argue. He switched off various switches, removed the cuff and the little red light clip from his finger, and wrapped it all up neatly into a coil and set it on top of the monitor.
The night nurse came, I guess at about 4 AM to check his vitals, I suppose since he was unhooked from the monitor. She wrapped the cuff around his arm, took his temp, checked his pulse. His eyes stayed closed.
“Pretty low,” she observed. “Ninety over fifty.”
“Normal, for when I am at rest,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“You gonna bury us all, honey,” she said to him, smiling.
“Not an attractive prospect,” he muttered, then turned over as she quietly slipped out the door.
The next morning, he was awake before me. The nurse had come in and told him he may as well eat breakfast, and there were no limits to what he could eat. He ordered an omelet with no cheese, then looked over at me and ordered me some juice and bagel and coffee.
We finished all that when the surgeon came in. He is from Spain, and Monsieur and he chattered in Spanish a bit, then in English, the doctor said that Monsieur would check out in about forty five minutes.
Monsieur got up, removed all of the sensors from his chest, and went into the bathroom.
I listened but didn’t hear any sound.
When he came out, he was started getting everything put into his over night bag. I helped.
“Why is it I never hear you in the bathroom?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he said, getting out his toothbrush.
“I never hear you pee. It’s like, silence. You can always hear guys pee.”
“Oh. Well. I sit down when I do that,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“You sit to pee?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “Standing is a filthy habit, and I don’t do it. It splashes everywhere,” he explained, finally.
Hm. I wondered why the seat was never up.

5 comments:

super des said...

Glad to hear all is well.

introspectre said...

YAY!

And how charming he is...

and how cute that he sits. So does my hubby. My son will, too, when I can break him of it. It IS disgusting. I know. I clean the bathroom.

But.. wait a minute. When WE sit, we can still hear us. How is it different?

Oh well. Anyway, I'm glad he came through it just fine. Of course he did. Now he can get back to chopping wood with a putty knife...

*hugs*

Unknown said...

Wow... as my Swedish cousins would say, I'm "holding thumbs" for y'all.

(I sit in the morning, when I'm not awake enough to manage. Otherwise, I'm a philistine, but I do my share of cleaning, too.)

Ry said...

Okay ladies, it's like this. If/when we sit, we aim for the edge of the bowel (between the water and the lip). It’s like riding a bike, I suppose. Anyway......

It's good to hear that your Superman is doing fine, not that I had any doubts to the contrary. It’s clear that there is a love and respect between you both, and there will come a day when his heart and soul is strong enough to ask you, without the affects of anesthesia fogging his mind.

Faerie said...

Good for you and the M.
and Ry??? did you really mean "bowel"? or bowl? ... and Im still trying to picture it actually. LOLing. Okay okay Ill stop!