TheBanyanTree: Duke Time Part 2

[Pam North]

OK!  Now we were ALL worried (only an hour and a half into the
surgery!!), but trying to keep up brave faces for her!  When she
called the number, the nurse informed her that the doctor wanted to
talk to her.  (!!!!!)  So we literally RACED back in and up three
flights (throwing Bonnie into an elevator that only had room for one
while the other three of us RAN up three flights of stairs in our
impatience to find out what was going on and be with her!!!!!) only to
all sit together in a private waiting room for almost TWENTY minutes
waiting on the doctor!!!!  (Lesson Two in Duke Time!)

While the doctors hadn't actually given "death" as a 'side effect' of
the surgery, they had mentioned that some type of paralysis was a
possibility, and forcryinoutloud!!!!, they were operating on his spine
and nerves and we were worried!!!

Finally ole Doc Sampson arrived to tell us that Louie was out of
surgery and all appeared to be fine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Already the nerves
'pinched' by the vertebrae were 'reforming' themselves and it looked
like things would be okay!!  So grateful were we for the good news,
that nobody asked many questions!  The doctor said Louie would be
coming out of surgery and be in 'recovery' for an hour, then get
assigned a room, and could probably go home tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After he left we sat for a few minutes filled with nervous laughter
and allowed Bonnie's blood pressure to return to normal.  Then I went
in to check on his room while the rest went to their respective
bathrooms.  Meanwhile, the woman at the info desk informed me that he
would probably be in recovery for closer to three hours!  "But the
doctor said one!" to which she replied, "Oh they always say that!"

So great!  Another Lesson in Duke Time!!!!!!!!!!!!  They told Bonnie
that she was NOT allowed to see him in recovery.  As her hour dragged
into two and then three, she kept questioning the women at the desk
and was told several stories.  First, that visiting him made him
susceptible to staff infections!  (Oh.  Only in recovery of course…
once he was in a room he wouldn't be?!?!?!??!?!)  Then more crap about
too many people in there, etc.

I could be more specific with details here, except that I'm trying to
remember what they told me to relay to you since I was sleeping
through it all!!!!!  I was tired!!!  Chuck and his wife had gone to
Wal-mart and gotten Louie 'jammies and slippers for his stay, and
since I was carrying them around, I found them a convenient pillow
while I slept on the uncomfortable bench seat, and leaned my head back
onto them and conked out!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And Cindy and Chuck decided they needed to get Bonnie OUT of there, so
they took her to the grocery store to find a Styrofoam cooler to put
the 'things' (I'm sorry… it's some Vietnamese name of something that
Cindy's husband made for them) in so Cindy could take her own cooler
home later.  So they placed the 'gizmo' in my lap next to my purse,
and left!

When I woke up an hour or so later, I was 'alone' in the waiting room
with dozens of strangers and a 'gizmo'!  I took this as a sign that
they'd paged Bonnie, Louie had a room, and that I should go inquire. 
Well, I inquired.  Louie had no room.

Okay.  Where were they?  Maybe down smoking?!  So I walked down.  They
weren't there, but I didn't want to waste the trip so I smoked one and
chatted with the trauma nurse also there to ruin her lungs!  Then I
went to the bathroom, got a cup of coffee, and went back upstairs
figuring to meet them all there in passing.

Nope.  I didn't recognize a face in the crowd.  So perhaps the other
woman was confused and Louie really did have a room!  Nope.  I checked
again and he hadn't been assigned.  So, I took my coffee and went back
down to smoke more.  And chatted with another nurse (ruining HER
lungs!) from oncology!

While I was sitting there, my cell phone rang.  I had turned it off
before I went into the hospital because, in MY experience, every
hospital has signs forbidding their use for fear of setting off
somebody's pacemaker or something!  But not THIS place!  EVERYbody was
using them, so I'd turned mine back on.  It showed a voicemail, but
I'd assumed it was my mom since my brother had told me that mom had
called my cell and home looking for me earlier to see if I'd left.

The ring was Maria.  She was calling to see how things were going and
so I fessed up.  I told her that everything was all right, and so
early in the day, that I might just go on home and not visit after
all.  I knew she worked until 6:30pm, and if I waited for her to get
off, I'd NEVER get home 'cause we'd start chatting and I'd stay, and
blah, blah, blah.  She gave me her work number and we hung up.  For
grins, I checked to see who'd called.  And it wasn't my mom!!!!!!!!!!!
 It was CARLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Like I've done in the past (and thought I
owned the monopoly on!!!!!), she'd been in a
don't-call-me-I-don't-want-to-talk-to-anybody mood and I was excited
to see her name!

So, even though I was roaming and not calling anybody, I called Carla!
 Evidently, I sent a 'post' to the tree with few details, she'd read
it, heard I was going to Duke, feared I was suffering from some
inoperable brain tumor that I didn't want to tell her about for fear
she couldn't handle it, and she was in a tizzy trying to ready her
life to jump on an airplane and come save me!!!!!!!!!!  I'm telling
you folks….. friends like THAT are hard to come by!!!!!!!!!!!

So we chatted, and I gave eased her mind and gave her the REAL scoop!  

Just as we were hanging up, my phone was ringing with a call from my
sister.  I told her where I was when she asked, and the three of them
met me in the smoking area outside.

Bonnie was hostile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  She wanted to see her husband!!! 
She figured him lying in recovery wondering if his wife was even
around and cared since she'd PROMISED him to be there when he woke
up!!!  And by now it was going on FOUR hours in recovery!!!  (Another
Lesson in Duke Time!!!!)  Suzanne from oncology (who shall forever be
referred to as "Julie from peds" to protect her innocence!) told
Bonnie to find the Charge Nurse and NICELY and tactfully state her
case and attempt to see her husband.  We talked about it for a while
more, "Julie" went back to work, and we all went back upstairs.

By now I'd had a nap and had a lot more energy.  I went in with Bonnie
to 'confront' the woman at the info desk.  Only this time it was a
man.  It was 'Sylvester'.  Bonnie told him that she'd been waiting for
more than four hours to see her husband and she really wanted to know
what was going on!  Sylvester was very empathetic and polite and she
told him he was 'nicer' than the woman!  (Because I wasn't awake for
the others, I don't know if this was true, or just a ruse to win his
sympathy, but it doesn't matter because she got results!)  He told her
he was SO sorry about that and actually called into recovery to find
out Louie's status.

And it turned out that they did finally have a room for him, and he'd
be on his way up in fifteen minutes!  Sylvester told us where to go
and wait, that we'd see Louie wheeled by, and that Bonnie should just
follow him to his room.  And for our troubles, he insisted that she
and I both take a mini-can of soda from the fridge on our way out! 
Nice guy….

So all four of us trooped up to the fourth floor and parked on the
benches in the corridor down from the nurse's station, strategically
positioned to see when Louie was wheeled up.  Lesson Twenty-seven in
Duke Time!  (Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration!  It could only have
been twenty-two!)  The fifteen minutes moved into half an hour.  So, I
did what pretty much comes naturally to me, I started entertaining the
troops!

I stood up and stood against the wall opposite their bench seats, and
started greeting everybody who walked by!  Now truly, if you want to
screw with people's heads, THIS is the way to go!!!  They're not
expecting it and they usually have their eyes straight ahead and won't
look as they walk by.  So, YOU do it first!  "Hi!", "Hello!", "Hey
there!".  And almost every single time they'll look up surprised, then
smile back, and return the greeting!  I commented on cute outfits,
earrings, all kinds of stuff!  Of course it was all my own ruse to
make them notice me because I so adore being the center of attention!

Louie's doctor walked back and forth three times before it figured it
out and went around so he wouldn't have to pass me again.  It might
have had something to do with my question, "Excuse me, do you know
what time it is…?  I mean "Duke" time!"

Finally, FINALLY, Louie was wheeled by, drugged and groggy, being
pushed by Patrick.  Now, I only found out his name later, my first
impression was that he was a Big Burly Guy, and after we encouraged
Bonnie to follow them to his room, we stood there while I joked about
BBG.  So when he came to walk past us and I started to ask 'BBG' a
question and he totally ignored me, I realized that HE didn't know I'd
given him the nic (!!), so I asked him over and read his nametag.  We
chatted for a few moments and I thanked him for bringing Louie up
safely, and Patrick told us, "I've been doing this for seventeen years
and I've never lost one yet!"

And as he walked away, Bonnie was walking back over.  The nurse had
sent her out of the room so they could get Louie arranged, hooked up,
etc.  'Five minutes'!!!  Righghghtttt!!!!  We waited about that long,
and then I went up to the nurse's station and asked.  They called the
room and found out he wasn't ready yet and told me that they'd call
when he was.  I asked if she knew about how long that would be.  "Oh,
no more than ten minutes."

"Would that be real time, or Duke Time?!"

And you know what?!  She caught right on and then laughed!! 
Evidently, we were not the first folks to figure out that time takes
on a whole new meaning at Duke!

And now I'm happy to report that Louie seems to be doing great!  He
was making jokes and complaining about the watered-down morphine
coming from his drip, but happy to hear that he didn't have to wait
twenty minutes between squirts, it was really only eight!  In REAL
time!!

Pam