Routine Surgery
It’s interesting that surgery’s can be considered routine. In my mind, a routine surgery is one that is scheduled in advance to fix a problem using a standard procedure that the doctors are trained to do.
Because they are routine in nature, they shouldn’t be scary.
Yet, when the patient is my last living parent, I find it rather scary.
A routine surgery isn’t scary like a surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, where the results could literally be a death sentence (I had to sit by the bedside for that a few years ago, which was horribly scary, and I will forever be thankful the doctor was able to come out of the operating room and say “we got it all”).
This one is scary, but more like – holy sh*!, I like having my Dad around, this had better go well. You see, this surgery has nothing to do with cancer, it’s just fixing a problem in a joint. But, I cannot help but think about the fact that my Dad is not getting younger. There is something unsettling about being put under general anesthetic so that a trained professional can cut through your skin and re-arrange your insides. Plus, there are always risks and those risks make surgery scary.
.
But, you see, the surgery was scheduled to start a few hours ago, and I still haven’t heard anything. But I also have no idea how long the surgery is actually supposed to last – maybe it’s a 4 hour surgery, or even longer? I failed to ask this question, so I have no concept of time. Or maybe the surgery didn’t start on time? And I don’t want to be annoyingly calling my step-mom asking for an update, when I know full-well, she’ll call me when she knows something.
So, for now, I’ll keep waiting. I’ll keep staring at my computer. I’ll keep pretending to work.
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Routine surgeries are only routine for the doctors performing them, never for the patient or their family. (Spoken as a former RN.) I can think of lots of reasons why you might not hear the results of a surgery when you’re expecting to: it could be delayed due to other procedures running long, it could that the surgery went well but took longer than anticipated, and it could be that there is simply a communication delay (i.e., everything is fine but you just haven’t heard about it).
Here’s hoping you hear something soon and that this surgery goes smoothly, with a good outcome and a speedy and full recovery.
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I don’t think there’s a surgery that exists that feels routine for the patient or family. It’s hard waiting for news (I remember very clearly when my daughter was in for a super routine thing, it felt like hours and I was SO relived when they finally paged me). I know that it’s very common for surgery schedules to run behind – all it takes is one case to go a bit longer than planned or an emergency to pull an anesthesia provider and it can result in a pretty serious delay for those waiting. But it sucks, the waiting and it never really gets easier.
Fingers crossed for a great outcome for your dad and hoping the wait for you isn’t for much longer.
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Hope it all goes well. X
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