A Guest Appearance from the Sultan Of Sarcasm

Good morning to all. Teresa made the call last night and discovered that the honor of her presence was requested at 5:45. That was both good and bad. The good was that she had little time to truly morph into the Nervous Patient. The bad was that we needed to be front and center at 5:45 after what I will charitably characterize as a night of rest. It was actually worse than that. Who sleeps well away from home? Who sleeps well when their nerves are on edge? Who sleeps well when their partner spends half the night traveling back and forth to the latrine, the result of the time honored ritual of bowel prep?
So Teresa is currently in surgery. They have the family's waiting experience as finely honed as that of the patient. First came the short tour, then multiple cups of coffee provided by the
wonderful volunteers, and finally the constant updates. "They just took Teresa in, Sir." "They will be inducing sleep and inserting the catheter soon, Sir." "We will be back to take you to her room to wait, Sir." They also have a large screen devoted to keeping on updated on the progress of each patient identified only by number. I found that those around me were into watching the board as though it was a horse race. There was a motley group looking as though they had made the trip up from the State Hospital who provided commentary. "Hey, look, 850159 (Teresa) is in surgery at 8:03. They are in the lead." "Look, 850177 is in recovery way ahead of everyone else." "Dude, look, they took mom's number off the board. I wonder what they means?" The sudden appearance of the chaplain, and her surgeons (pictured above) should have been a clue, but I digress. So here it is 11:00 and I am still waiting. For the 17th time they were by to tell me that all was going well and I thought I'd pass that along to you. More updates will follow as they become available.
11:40 Addendum: I am sitting in this rather sterile room awaiting Teresa's arrival. I haven't heard anything as yet but I am sure she'll be coming in fairly soon. So far the major highlight has been watching Mr. Urstadt(sp?) parade up and down the hall taking his morning exercise. Very impressive to see a man of his years walking at that speed with such ease. Very, very, impressive watching the nurse trying to persuade him to slip on another robe to cover his ass so to speak. He's having none of it, and in fact if it weren't for the occassional wink that he tosses in the nurse's direction you'd think he was oblivious to her.
They just called to report Teresa is in recovery. So that's good news. Before I was distracted by the errant hinder I was commenting on the sterile environs which will soon be Teresa'a home for a few days. Attached to the ceiling is a contraption like the one on the left. When they finally bring her in I hope she is asleep. She isn't going to be happy when they do this to her.