The Big Day

Bryan reporting...

Huge day today, no doubt Maggie won't remember much of it, so I'll record it here. Arrived at Mercy around 6:45 after a quick trip up a misty Mt Eden to lose a few minutes. Walked into reception and handed over $9,000, ouch, they didn't seem impressed about being given a cheque! What did they expect, a handful of redies?

Admission was fast since they wanted to get the OR started by 7:30 so the nurses were being harried by the theater staff. The anesthetist, Graham, made a brief appearance and told me to go drink coffees, read the paper, and come back in four hours, he didn't give me a prescription though, so I only administered two doses (of coffee), orally at Circus along with some waffles.

Waited around and got a txt from the anesthetist at about 12:00 saying that they'd be another 90 minutes so I went for a walk to Eden gardens for lunch and something to do. But really there is only so much looking at trees in the drizzle you can do. Dr Barnes called at 13:30 to say he was done and that everything went well, so I scooted back to the ward for some more waiting.

Margaret's parents arrived with some flowers and joined the waiting party. Understandably a 5 and a half hour surgery was a long ordeal so Margaret went straight to ICU from recovery. Took me another couple of hours to get this message tho. So about 17:00 Margaret's parents and I got to see her.

At that stage she was quite dozy from from the anaesthetics and pain relief drugs. The surgeon and anesthetist, were apparently putting in an appearance so I waited around and repeated the days events several times to Maggie who was in a bit of pain and itchy from the Morphine. She also has welt on the forehead from being on her front for so long. Surprisingly, to me at least, she was quite ok lying on her back where there is a very long incision.

The surgeon and anesthetist, checked in at 2015 and looked pleased, I didn't get too much information but Maggie is now fused from L3 to T7 (which is most of her back) and is quite straight. We marked her height on the wall before she left, will measure her when she gets back, my bet is on an extra 19mm (other takers for bets?). I left her in the hands of the capable nurses with her iPod plugged in. Hopefully she'll be back down on the ward early tomorrow.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who sent messages and stuff.

Will report in tomorrow,
Bryan