Hell’s Waiting Room #reflection
Hell’s Waiting Room
Here’s the thing, I sit here stumbling over words because I have a number of things I need to work on right now but nothing is solidifying in my mind. It could be that I had the new x-rays done for the surgery I have coming up. It could also be other things, but this is the one that is sticking in my mind. It helps that this is a fresh thought and easy to lock on to.
So, there is good news and bad news or something along those lines. I’m not exactly certain how I want to take it all yet. In the simplest form, the surgery from roughly 5 or 6 months ago, worked out better than expected. That is one of the things we discovered today. We won’t be doing the last resort surgery like we were expecting. But you know there is more to it than that.
I haven’t quite stabilized yet. Which sounds weird when you say it out loud. We always think of that as something pertaining to people that are on the brink of death. This isn’t quite that drastic, at least not at this time (I mean when you really think about it, we are all going to die at some point anyway). In reference to my issues, stability means that I am not going to deteriorate, at least not for a long time. Which could happen at any time if I slip into a flare up. But that is another issue entirely.
See, what happened here is, in the last surgery, half of the problem adjusted as we hoped it would. The other half has shown improvement but not nearly as much. And this sounds confusing as all hell, I’m sure. Essentially, picture a long section where half of it is working properly but the other half closed tighter in on itself. It’s better than before but only marginally.
What this means then, my next surgery is going to be the same procedure we did a few months ago. The recovery is going to be the same as well. For me, I at least know what to expect from all this on my end. It’s easy to get into a routine if you have done it before. I will end up with a week of misery and pain killers as opposed to an entire month. That alone is a blessing.
Our new hope from this will be that this fixes the issue enough that I don’t have problems again or at least not for a long time. That can be a huge hope no matter how you want to think about it. This is the nature of auto immune diseases, they can come back when you least expect or want them to. I could have the flare up that pushes me to total reconstructive surgery at any time. That is not something we want at all.
There were a few other things I had wanted to talk about today. But for the life of me, I can’t remember what they were. Or maybe I do remember…
So, you spend enough time in pre-op, you start to hear the conversations around you. A couple of interesting ones this time. The first came from the “room” beside mine. I say “room” because this is only a loose sense of the word. Instead of walls each space is separated by a thin curtain. Of course, this makes it easier to hear what people are saying around you.
Anyway, in this room, I can hear a woman talking. She isn’t the patient. I don’t even think they were in for what the topic of conversation had been. It was just something off the wall to be talking about. Anyway, she had been telling the story, I think to one of the nurses.
The patient had been in bar fights in the past. In one of them, he had been attacked with a broken beer bottle. I am pretty sure you might have an idea where this is going. But I dare say that you are only half right. See, he had been cut by the bottle (as to be expected). But where it gets weird, he couldn’t go to the hospital for the wound. I don’t have that kind of information but listening it is possible to infer from what snippets come out. So yeah, the dood was cut by a bottle and can’t go to the hospital. His partner told the nurse that she had to take a needle and thread and sew up his wounds herself. People do some crazy stuff it seems.
On the other side, we heard a person who had come for amputations. Most of the foot on one leg and then the entire other leg. It was one of those things that puts your world into a bit of perspective. Here I was in a comfy chair, just waiting for some new x-rays. Life continues for whatever normal has fallen into place for the rest of us.
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