Surgery Waiting Room

It's a typical rainy winter's day here in Seattle, and I'm currently camped out in the Surgery Waiting Room at the University of Washington Hospital with Josh's parents.  We arrived at the hospital at 7 am, and as soon as Josh and Ben checked in, Josh and I were escorted past a lot of large, scary-looking machines into the pre-op room, which is just a long row of hospital gurneys with curtains. 

Josh put all his clothes in a plastic bag and changed into his hospital gown and slipper socks.  Since there were some requests for a photo, Josh obliged -- although he drew the line at providing a rear view.  I can report that it did tie in the back, bathrobe-style, so there was less risk of the cheeky exposure that hospital gowns are notorious for.

After getting comfortable in his bed, the nurse outfitted Josh with a warming blanket -- which basically looked like an inflatable pool raft hooked up to a shop-vac -- and some knee-high compression stockings, which help prevent blood clots during surgery.  We made some jokes about whether he should have some elbow-length gloves and a tiara to go with his gown and stockings, but the best they could do was a cloth shower cap.

A whole team of people showed up to hook up his IV and various monitors.  They gave him a blood thinner injection to also help prevent blood clots, and stuck an anti-nausea patch behind his ear as he's had bad reactions to anesthesia after his shoulder surgeries.  They also marked his chest to indicate which kidney should be removed (the left one).  Around 8:30, they finally got the go-ahead to start the sedation, so I wished him luck and they wheeled him off to the operating room.  Before I headed back to the waiting room, I peeked in on Ben, who had just settled into his own bed down the hall.  He was cool as a cucumber and told me to try not to worry.  Not only has he been through this before -- when he got a kidney from his father 20 years ago -- but he spent a lot of time in hospitals as a child.  He said felt right at home. 

The Surgery Waiting Room is pretty nice.  It's well stocked with comfy chairs, tables, magazines, jigsaw puzzles, WiFi, and a water cooler, and has its own restroom and a couple consultation rooms where doctors can meet with patients' families.  The room is staffed by a volunteer who directs phone calls from the ORs to the appropriate family members.  I got a call around 10 am from someone in Josh's OR to let me know that they had started his surgery and everything was going well so far. 

There's also a TV monitor in the room where you can track a patient's progress.  Each patient is given a code number made up of the first two letters of their first and last names and their birthdate.  That caused some initial confusion for us as Ben's first name is John (Benjamin is his middle name), so Josh and Ben's code numbers are identical except for the birthdate.  Good thing they weren't born on the same day of the month!  Josh and I also noticed that the whiteboard in the pre-op room had two listings for "J. Fitzhugh", so we encouraged everyone to call his brother "Ben" and to be sure they didn't give Josh one of Ben's kidney's by mistake.  Fortunately, they do frequent wristband checks to make sure they are dealing with the correct patient.  Anyway, the monitor indicates whether the patient is in pre-op, the OR, or recovery.

The monitor is now indicating that Ben has gone into the OR, so hopefully we'll get another status update soon.  The surgeon told us that they wouldn't start operating on Ben until they were sure everything was OK with Josh, but that they wouldn't remove Josh's kidney until they were sure everything was OK with Ben, so there must be a fair amount of communication between the two surgical teams.  He said the two surgeries would overlap by about an hour, and that Josh's kidney would be on its own for about half an hour while they prepped it for the transplant.  Apparently, it gets a thorough cleaning before they give it to Ben.

This is probably way more information than most people care to know, but writing this gives me something to do while I'm waiting.  It's difficult to concentrate on a book or other distractions until I know that Josh is OK.