Plumbing is Working.

One week later and Tom is feeling well.  He is back to his regular diet of eating anything he darn well pleases and his digestive system is working nicely. Tomorrow he will have the staple taken out of the middle of his incision, which is also healing well. We learned about how surgery needs to heal from the inside out, the actual incision being the last thing to heal.

Wednesday, March 1st will be our thirty-first wedding anniversary. We are going to Doug Fir Lounge to hear Tommy Stinton again. Allison and Logan are joining us there. Everyone is invited. Everyone, that is, who can handle going to a rock show in the middle of the week and who reads this blog post. Quiet a small group but please come if you can. The band is called Bash and Pop. Doors open at 7:30 show starts at 8:30. We will be eating and meeting upstairs in the lounge before heading downstairs for the music.

Bash and Pop

Anyone interested in reading about the band and the opening band, The Yawpers,  

can copy and paste this link:

http://www.dougfirlounge.com/event/1402666-bash-pop-portland/

Home!

Tom is home!  He was released this morning less than forty-eight hours after his surgery. Yesterday I picked up some newspapers and went to visit him. They already had him walking around but were feeding him only liquids and not very tasty ones at that. I got a room at the nearby motel and made plans for my friend Marie to come and spend the night with me. This morning after the complimentary breakfast we took a short walk. I returned to the motel room around 10:00 to find a message on my phone that he was ready to be released.

Everything I have read online says that three to ten days is the usual stay for his procedure, but they let him go in less than two. He was dressed and ready when I arrived at 10:30. The directions are basically to eat soft food and gradually introduce his regular foods. Tom wanted to go get a burrito. I wanted to get some more specifics from a nurse. She vetoed the burrito and suggested soup, toast, muffins and ice cream. We stopped at Starbucks on the way home and he got a latte and blueberry muffin and was in heaven.  He's taking a nap on the sofa now, happy as a clam.  Are clams really happy? Maybe he's happy as a man released from the hospital and napping on his own sofa.

That's the news for now folks.

Surgery Smergery

It's 8:00 a.m. Friday, February 17th and we are at Kaiser Sunnyside Hospital for Tom's reconnection surgery. Last night was prep, getting things squeaky clean for the surgeon. He is back in SPA (surgical prep area) and I have my trusty pager in hand which tells me if he is:
In Facility
In SPA
In Surgery
In Recovery
In Room
It coordinates with a color coded screen and works anywhere in the hospital and parking garage. After he is prepped, they will call me back and I will get to stay with him until he is wheeled away to surgery.  I beleive this is where I first started this blog back in April when he had his colostomy surgery. I didn't even know how to post photos when I began. Now that's the majority of what I post.

These are photos of the facility that I took last March and it looks exactly the same today.  It's a pleasant looking environment tastefully decorated. I will be spending the day here. Tom too!



To be continued......






Three hours later...
Tom is prepped and we have been waiting in the  small curtained area for three hours!  I guess Dr. Parsons first surgery is taking longer than expected.  Hope he gets a break before operating on Tom. I have been reading and Tom has been reading and sleeping.  Eleven patients have been prepped and wheeled off to surgery. I'm hungry. Poor lil me.... ;-)

Later.
This is the ceiling outside of our curtained area where we waited for almost five hours until the surgeon was done with his first operation and ready to work on Tom.  I don't know what happened during that first operation, but it took several hours longer than planned.

When Dr. Parsons came to meet with us, I asked him if he got a break.  He said this was his break. He also assured us that Tom's reversal should be easy and would be done through the hole already in Tom's side, no new scars necessary! They finally rolled Tom away and I took one more glance at the cloud light inserts in the ceiling. What a simple but great idea to make plastic sky panels instead of the usual white ones.    

I have since had a healthy lunch and a long, passionate conversation with two woman I met in the cafeteria, about the evil large pharmaceutical companys, health insurance, and the future of the free world for ourselves and our children. Now I am waiting for my pager to go off to inform me that Tom is in the recovery room.
...It's ringing.....

 4:30  I've met with Dr. Parsons who told me that things went as planned. He still had two "smaller" surgeries to perform today. I remarked again that he must be tired. He replied that it wasn't a "meeting" and explained how half of his time was spent in meetings and that doing surgery felt better. I understood immediately and commented how I was a retired teacher and that I missed the kids and classroom but not the meetings! I can't remember his exact words but I came away with the feeling that when he was doing surgery, he was in his element, as a musician, artist, or teacher might be. The meetings of course are so very necessary to support the whole structure but the joy comes not from the meetings.

7:00  Tom is in room 128A peacefully resting.  I'll hang out here for a while before heading home. He is only allowed ice chips for the time being although he's probably dreaming of a milk shake. I took this photo from the waiting room window just before my pager buzzed. Is that a UFO?

The Calm

Tom and I just returned from three dry, warm and lovely days at the beach. He is scheduled for surgery on Friday.

I tried to name this post The Calm Before the Storm, but the Blogger site keeps closing down everytime I try to complete the title and when I open it I'm told that an error has occurred while trying to save my post. So I cannot alter the title and have come to believe that it is just the calm and there will be no storm.  That is my mantra for the week. Things will remain calm.

Tom's sister, Kathleen, is newly retired from her social services job and is managing the Twin Rocks Motel in Rockaway OR.  Tom and I got to  stay three days and enjoy visiting with Kathleen. We were privileged to stay in cabin #1 with a fantastic view of the ocean and the twin rocks.

Our niece Jennifer (Kathleen's daughter) had her paintings displayed at a show where people voted.   She won first prize and a $100 gift certificate for art supplies. We were so happy to be there to celebrate with her.

On Valentine's Day we went to the Fish Peddler Restaurant at the Pacific Oyster Company in Bay City.  We have driven by this place for the last 30 years and remarked on the literal mountains of oyster shells, but have never stopped in before. It was a fun and casual environment and the food was absolutely delicious. Tom, who doesn't really like oysters, oystered up and ordered oyster stew and garlic toast which he loved. Kathleen and I shared an order of oyster shooters before her Cioppino arrived. I dined on Five River Oysters Wilson, which are baked oysters with blue cheese, herbed garlic butter and panko bread crumbs. Sounds weird but they were so delicious, I will order them again when we return.  And we will return. 

Here is a cut and paste menu of their baked oysters. Yeah, I'm obsessed.

Oysters Kilchis pesto, parmesan & hot sauce
Oysters Tillamook bacon, red onion, shredded Tillamook sharp cheddar
Oyster Wilson blue cheese, herbed garlic butter, panko bread crumbs
Oysters Trask herbed butter sauce
Oyster Miami barbecue sauce, red onion

Tom and Kathleen at The Fish Peddler

We had a calm and delightful stay at the beach.  Kaiser will call us tomorrow to tell us the time to arrive at the hospital on Friday,  which is usually around 6:00 am. Dr. Parsons, the surgeon and head of the department, is the one who performed the colostomy, so he will be reconnecting his own handiwork. We have faith that he can do the job and that Tom will recover quickly.

One of the photos I took on the beach.
Do you want to see the other thirty?
Didn't think so.

Tom and Ibby, his furry friend.

Ibby!

Looking forward to calm sailing and no storm in sight.