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Hospital Blogging Day 2 and then some

4:45 AM -- Mom calls to inform me that Dad will be sent to pre-op @ 6:45 a.m. for surgery to begin @ ~7:30 a.m. So much for plans to get up normally, eat breakfast and get caffienated...

6:00 AM -- turning on the lights in the cardiac intensive care unit waiting room since there's no one there to even talk to... Mom elects to try and take a nap, while I try to find a phone signal somewhere so I can at least get my work email via Blackberry... no luck there either.

7:30 AM -- the phone rings in the waiting room and we're not sure whether or not to answer... I do and find out that Dad isn't going in first but second. We stick around for about 20 minutes (about as long as Mom can stand -- she hates tubes and machines that go beep).

7:50 AM -- Camping out in the lobby of the Methodist Hospital (much nicer than the waiting room). I decide to go back to the hotel across the street to get my laptop in hopes of a wifi connection, and to get some breakfast.

9:00 AM -- Back to the lobby of the hospital! By this time, Mom's friend Libby has arrived and is bantering on as usual.

10:00 AM -- Libby and I head down to the waiting room to check on getting a pager and when the surgery is set to go forward. Apparently patient #1 has had complications and his procedure is going to take a while... and a while more to get him into recovery (and the surgeon to be comfortable signing off and moving on to Dad.)

11:00 AM -- Libby and I go talk with Dad in pre-op... he's bored and ancy (even with sedation) because his had nothing to do but watch the goings-on for the last 5 hours... although he admits that it's been no picnic for us either.

11:40 AM -- Dad's best friend David (who joined us around 9:30) and I make a brief visit to pre-op to find out what the latest new is. At this point, no news is frustrating news -- the 4-5 hour window for the surgery keeps moving.

It's noon and still no word on when things will start happening. The nurses aide has our phone numbers.

I head back to the hotel to log into work and spill out this blog entry. Hopefully, Libby is getting Mom to have more than a smoothy for lunch...
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