More on my recent surgery

Yesterday I informed you that my surgery appears to date to have been successful although one night without drain alarms is not a trend. The purpose of today’s blog is to fill in some of the holes in yesterday’s somewhat cryptic blog. Perhaps you will pick up some pointers that could help you along the way.

The hospital where our surgeon, Dr. Tan has privileges is Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital. They sent out a request for me to fill in and verify gobs of patient information prior to my visit. I complied and when we arrived to check in, there was no wait. I had to sign one HERPA form for Tricare for Life and provide an ID (Texas Driver’s License), my Medicare card and military ID (for Tricare) and that’s it. We were then immediately escorted back to the surgery prep area where I spent almost the next hour being prepped for surgery.

During this prep, I was intensely quizzed as to the meds I was taking, and WHEN I last took them. Heads up: know your meds and schedule for taking them. This was important to them because I was told NOT to take any meds the morning of surgery except a Satin. Be advised I received a phone call from a nurse at the hospital about a week before my scheduled surgery during which we went over my meds in detail. Throughout the check-in and prior to actually going into surgery, there was repeated checking of details with different people with different skill sets as they made their presence known. The last questioning was as I was being moved from the traveling gurney to the operating table where I was for the umpteenth time asked what my name and date of birth was, my doctor’s name, and the day’s procedure.

I was told to take a shower the morning of the surgery which I did. During prep for surgery, I was provided a medicated heated towel and instructed to wipe down my frontal area to make certain it was ultra-clean.

We were informed that I would be in recovery after surgery for an hour and a half; I was in recovery for 20 minutes before I was in a wheelchair and out the door. The point is, there are estimates and there are estimates. Hospitals seem to have their own concept of time as do the doctors that are Gods therein.

My wife received a constant flow of texts, upwards of ten, during my surgery progress, keeping her updated on my status. At the completion of my surgery, she received a text from Dr. Tan that the surgery was successfully completed and he would be calling her which he did. Dr. Tan explained to my wife what he had found, what he had done to correct it, and post-surgery procedures. She commented to me that she almost had too much status information. My heads up here is that I know many people in our age group do not text. If you fall into this category, you are potentially missing out on an important near real-time data source. This method worked really well for us.