Surgery Monday

This is the day of my daughter's surgery. She is having an Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion. I will go over to the hospital at 8:00 and sit in the surgery waiting room until they are finished and she is in recovery.

Bob came over last night and we watched "60 Minutes" and then "Killing Lincoln" which was on the National Geographic channel. It was pretty good. I got to bed about 10:00 and slept pretty well. Missy woke me up at 3:30 to go outside. I stayed up awhile let her back in.

The church group went to the Railroad Inn in Independence for lunch. It was good as usual. We seldom go there because it's quite a ways out of our way. After lunch I came home and prepared my letters. They won't go out today because this is President's Day and there is no mail delivery.

More later....

Using the local orthopedic specialist may have been a mistake. We arrived at 8:00 as we were told. They took her to a room at 9:00 and at 11:15 she was finally taken to surgery.

I understand there is a new procedure that does not require a piece of the hip bone to be inserted into the spine but this surgeon evidently doesn't know that procedure. He is doing it the old way and removing a piece of bone from her hip to use in her spine. It is now 2:00 and I have heard nothing. It is to be a three to four hour surgery with a couple of hours in recovery.

I am concerned.

More later....I am going back to the hospital.

It was a huge surgery. It was to have begun at 8:45 but they didn't get to her until 11:00. They went in through her abdomen to her spine. They took a piece of bone out of her hip to put into her spine for a bone graft. It wasn't over until 2:30. She did really well from what they said. They said she would be off work three months but then today they said it depended entirely on how well she did with her therapy. She figures perhaps six weeks. Tomorrow they will help her into her brace and get her on her feet. They said the more she could move around, the better.

When they got her into recovery they said I could not come back to see her because they were going to have another patient in the same recovery area and it was a sterile area. I told them I was very unhappy about all the delay in the surgery and had waited all day to see her and I WAS going to see her. They said they would send a nurse back to get me and I could go in for twenty minutes and that's what they did. She immediately took my hand and held it. I was not about to let that doctor's protocol keep me from seeing her.

There is a newer procedure that does not use the bone graft from the hip but he evidently is not familiar with it. He was supposed to be very good and was well trained in a prestigious hospital but I was not impressed.

We will see what we will see.