She’s been sleeping peacefully for the last 30-45 minutes, so it’s time to finally get a recap out the door.
Before I get too far along…. thank you everyone for your tireless compassion, prayers, and unending support. The outpouring from everyone has been phenomenal, and I can’t begin to say thank you enough to enough people.
I do need to say a special thank you to BW and MW (you know who you are!). The dark chocolate milano cookies were EXACTLY the lift I needed most tonight 🙂
We got to the hospital right at 1130, right at our appointed time. After we got checked in and waited a few minutes, we were ushered into the main surgery prep area. TG met with the anesthesiologist first, then several nurses, and of course our main surgeon. I thanked our surgeon for the call on Sunday night, and he shared more of the background on how Sunday night went down. It seems he carried his appeal all the way up to the head person at the hospital, who also had to say “I’m sorry, there simply is nothing we can do”… which speaks volumes about how overrun the hospital was Sunday night into Monday. It’s probably for the best we took a 24 hour delay getting started. Anyway, he also had a conversation with one of the department heads in the ICU, who was just coming back off vacation. They listened, understood, and said “I will fix this for you tomorrow.” And to their credit, they did. Bad situation all around, and I gotta give kudos where they’re due to the people who were able to get engaged and get everything moving.
But I digress…
TG got taken back to OR a little before 130. We were expecting hourly update calls, and so for the first hour or so, we didn’t worry too much. There’s only so much progress they could possibly make in the first hour, all while getting TG wired up, all the monitors in place, all the safeties in place, the team lined up, and ready to walk down the script. The first update call came in about 315 — they had only really gotten started at 240 or so. As expected, there wasn’t a lot to update us on. So I figured there were a few minutes, so I went downstairs to grab a quick bite and a tea for DW.
I get back upstairs 30 minutes later at 345. To my surprise, there’s the surgeon, sitting on the couch, talking with DW. His part: done. The thoracic surgeon was in progress buttoning TG up. He said her spine was very loose, and therefore very flexible, with plenty of room to straighten. All wonderful news.
Based on what he was seeing, he decided to call the play on the spot to NOT go down all the way to L4, instead opting to only go from T11 to L3. This is great news, because it means she has a lot less risk of back pain later in life. So great news all around.
TG’s awake…. part two will have to come later.