Yippee!  The surgery was a success!  Whew.  Now I can breathe.

His surgery was scheduled for this afternoon so I set my alarm for 7:00.  The alarm goes off, I turn it off and lay my head down for a minute.  Hannah then knocks on my door and I am like “I’m up!”  But she hands me the phone and says the hospital called but she didn’t get to it in time.  So I call back the number and I am told that the Dr. decided to do the surgery right now and he’s being wheeled to surgery!   Okay, so before when I said I lived 60 miles away from the hospital, its actually about 37 (seems like 60 sometimes though!).  So I immediately jump in the shower.

Of course, when I get out, Hannah has three outfits laid out for me to wear!  Seriously, she is the most amazing helper!  She’s done all of the Christmas shopping (except her gifts!) , ALL of the wrapping, cleaned the house and taken care of the dog.  In a situation like this, I don’t know what I would do without her.

So I get on the road at 7:30 and it takes me TWO HOURS to get to the hospital!  Apparently there was black ice on the roads earlier and I saw at least seven fender benders on the side of the road.  Once I passed all the accidents it was smooth sailing.   Luckily my parents-in-law arrived before me, got his lap top, wedding band and cell phone at the nurses station and we hung out in the surgery waiting room.  I called my Mom to give her a heads up that he was already in surgery and she drove down to wait with us.

So the Dr. came to see us about 10:30?  He said that it was a good thing he got in when he did because the knee was so infected.  Because knee replacements aren’t meant to come out, there was some additional bone damage so when he gets the new one fitted it will be custom made.  Right now he has a really temporary knee that is filled with antibiotics, and he’ll have a pic line of antibiotics for six weeks.  If all goes well and the infection is gone, he’ll have another knee replacement in nine weeks.

I got to see him in the recovery room – he was really doped up and in and out of sleep.  He kept saying he was seeing things that weren’t there!

So here’s the funny part!  We are up by his room, waiting for him to be wheeled in from recovery and I see one of his doctors (the internist) and tell him that the surgery went well.  Then all of a sudden he starts talking about dementia, that he wants to put him in for psychiatric ward for a few days, and then determine which nursing home he will go to for recovery.  Then he looks at my Mom and says “are you the daughter?”  We just laugh and I say that I am the wife, my Mom is the mother-in-law, and that these are Tony’s parents.  All of a sudden the Dr. has a look on his face and says “oh, my gosh, I’ve just been describing another patient who is 80!”  That made us laugh so hard – but it was much needed laughter!

So once we knew that Tony was in recovery, we headed to the cafeteria.  I ended up getting a cup of chicken tortilla soup and a side salad – and actually, it wasn’t that bad!  I had the camera so took a pic of my salad:

the picture of the soup didn't turn out!
the picture of the soup didn't turn out!

I hope to make it out to see Tony tomorrow, but we are supposed to get up to 12 inches of snow during the day tomorrow.  Even though he said I should stay home, I still feel bad if I am not there with him!

Again, thanks for all your good thoughts!  Hopefully I’ll post tomorrow.