2021 Wednesday — Mr. Fun’s Surgery

Mr. Fun & I arrived at Kaiser Hospital at 5:10 this morning. At 5:55, the surgery nurse led him toward the surgery unit. The Admitting Clerk said surgery would begin at 7:30 (and it did) and would last for approximate 106 minutes, (so not quite 2 hours). He would be in recovery for 2 hours and then be released at about 11:15 at the earliest. Okay!

Mr. Fun is having a lump removed from his neck. I'm asking God that there would be no cancer in that lump and that it is not tangled into other tissues, muscles, or etc.

Here’s the Surgery Update:
The short report:
Mr. Fun is okay and home.
The long report (which most people don’t want to read):
When Mr. Fun was admitted early this morning, I was given strict warning by the admitting clerk that I could not stay in the building, nor could I stay outside, not even in my car (because of Covid). So I waited at home.

Throughout the morning Kaiser nurses sent numerous texts to keep me informed (even sent me some photos—so I could create a blip).

So, Mr. Fun’s surgeon phoned me exactly one hour after I was notified that surgery had started. The doctor explained that surgery was finished (it was a lipoma). The doctor said the surgery was very successful with a drain inserted and a prescription waiting in the pharmacy for me to pick-up. All I had to do was wait for the recovery nurse to phone to tell me to come get Mr. Fun.

When the call arrived, I headed to the hospital. I was doing just fine until the recovery nurse asked me to step into the recovery ward; she needed to show me a few things.

Mr. Fun was sitting on the side of the bed drinking juice and eating what he described as a “less than delicious” turkey sandwich; he was trying to soothe his burning throat. His voice was all but gone. He said it felt like a wire brush had been put down his throat.

He had a couple tubes connected to him; one was a tube filled with blood connected to the wound and to the clear plastic drain bulb. The nurse immediately began to show me how to “milk” the tube into the drain bulb and then to empty the bulb and measure the contents.

People who know me well are reading between the lines here knowing that right at that moment I was getting queasy and the room was slowly beginning to spin and spin even faster. Egads!

I was, of course, wearing a mask so I was already suffocating, and I was doing my best Oscar performance of the day and acting like I was okay.

Mr. Fun was out-of-it enough that he did not realize what was happening to me. Then the nurse began to read me pages and pages of instruction about what to do if “this happened” or “that happened” and which phone number to call “if he fell,” and I looked at her with wide eyes and said, “I’m about to fall; I need to sit down.”

Panic erupted around me as she got me to the wheelchair they had brought in for Mr. Fun. I started peeling my winter coat off and unbuttoning the flannel shirt beneath that; I was overheating.

The nurse instantly had cold fruit juice for me to drink and a couple packages of stale graham crackers to chew. The room slowly quit spinning. Hours later my stomach was still floating on waves in my gut.

The conversation then between two nurses turned to how they were going to get Mr. Fun to the first floor and out to my car in the parking lot. They knew I wouldn’t be pushing his wheelchair anywhere.

The long of it, sorry this isn’t short, I got him home. His throat was hurting pretty bad, so we doctored that with throat lozenges. If or when his neck wound hurts, he has pain pills.

We return to Kaiser this coming Monday to remove the drain. If Mr. Fun gets “release” papers at that moment, we’ll be packing our bags to head for California’s Central Coast. AND that will be amazing!

This has been a grand finale Wednesday of December!

Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol
and Chloe & Mitzi too!