Booked In
Thursday August 28th 2008
Admission went smoothly and we were shown to Room 121 on the first floor, not a suite this time, but large enough for the two of us! There was the usual television high on the wall, a sofa bed and a large and comfortable recliner chair as well as the hospital bed. The nurse followed us in and gave Derek a gown to put on, which he did, leaving his boxers on to preserve a little modesty behind the almost transparent paper gown. As he did so, I noticed the razor in the nurses hand…….end of modesty then! So onto the bed a thorough dry shave by the nurse and ten minutes later they wheeled him away to the theatre. It was still only 20 to nine. The first hour he was gone went quickly enough, but the time dragged from then on and my worry for him grew, but I could get no further information. It was nine hours before they came to tell me he was out of surgery and that I could go and see him. No explanation of why it had taken so long and I was frantic when I overheard one of the nurses saying “….problema…”. Derek was down on the ground floor in the recovery room next to the operating theatre. The anesthetist came to see me and explained that when they administered the anesthetic they had unfortunately managed to knock out his two front teeth! He said that I would be able to see Derek for only 1 minute. I was shown in and literally given one minute with him before being ushered away again. They told me he was to be taken to the Intensive care ward – which was normal practise after on operation and that I could come back to see him, accompanied by a nurse, between 7 and 7:30. It was 7:20pm before the nurse was available to take me down to see him, but the ward was not yet open and I joined a queue of other concerned relatives. Eventually, the doors opened and we were allowed inside, however there was no sign of Derek. The nurse found me and explained that he was now well enough to go back to his own room, so to return there and he would be back in half an hour. About three quarters of an hour later they wheeled him back into his room. He looked so poorly, hooked up to various drips and the oxygen tubes, drifting in and out of a sleepy state. The anesthetic had not agreed with him at all and he felt very sick, so they kept pumping full of anti-sickness drugs and pain killers. Still, it was all over and he spent an otherwise uneventful night.