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Joe's Ankle Surgery

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
I know I've been really behind on the blogs. I actually blogged about this on MySpace, but just haven't made my way here. Bad Kimi..Bad! Things have just been so hectic and now I'm taking care of two babies instead of one (Hailey and now Joe!). So here is the long and skinny on how Joe's ankle surgery went:

We left here a little late - figures. We got to the sixth floor of the hospital and they immediately stuck me in a waiting room with no toys, a hard tile floor, a TV with no channels (only a VCR and like 5 movies) and there was one other person there already waiting. Great..looked fun *sarcasm*.

They get Joe's paperwork all ready to go and they come and get me and we go to get him all dressed up. OMG He was SO cute in his little outfit.. I wish I'd taken a picture! A doctor came and wrote on his left ankle, making sure it was marked that that was the ankle for surgery (although I had already used a permanent marker on Joe's right ankle and wrote "OTHER ANKLE" on it. haha

We wait there for a little while and they stick me in the waiting room again - so fast that I had NO clue what was going on and wasn't even given the chance to say goodbye to Joe at all - which is absolute BULLSHIT. Anything could have gone wrong and they should have given us time together as a family. I swear.. I'm like the only damn person with common sense and a heart around here!

Joe left... and I didn't see him again nor hear if he was okay for another SIX HOURS. What was supposed to be a "three hour surgery" turned out to be much, much longer. Apparently, Joe had a lot of trouble during the surgery because his oxygen levels kept dropping really low and he would almost completely forget to breathe (well no shit.. he has SLEEP APNEA and I have known that for a while although he's never been officially diagnosed). But now.. a doctor has even told him "You have sleep apnea. You have got to get that sleep study done so we can get you sleeping properly again... no wonder you are always so damn tired." So anyways....

Around noon, a guy in uniform came into the waiting room and told me "Your husband is out of operation, and is being taken into recovery. That phone over there will ring and when it's for you, they will let you know where to go to be with him." First off.. that was the most poorly worded after surgery update I've ever heard. Okay.. so I've actually never heard one before, but still. No word on is he were awake, alive or anything... and telling me I could go "be with him" made me think my husband was dead and I was going to go claim the damn body. I was freaked out enough.. I didn't need that crap!

The phone must have rang 100 times.. the waiting room had filled up and people were in and out all day. The phone was never for me. At 2pm, another guy in uniform game in to talk to me... and even took me out of the waiting room to the reception desk because he couldn't figure out why I hadn't been taken to my husband (me either..). But the receptionist got REALLY huffy with me and told I needed to "be patient and go sit in the waiting room" and I was like "Whoah bitch..I didn't come out here on my damn own...he's the one who brought me out here!" I went BACK into the damned waiting room.

By this time, I'm in a panic. I'm thinking he's dead and they are rounding up a team to talk to me, getting me a therapist set up and all sorts of stuff and figuring out how they are going to tell a woman who has been sitting in a waiting room for eight hours with her daughter, that her husband died during an ankle surgery.

Thirty minutes pass, and a little old woman comes in and tells me to come with her and by this time, I'm so irritated I could hurt someone. But she opened the door... and there was Joe - groggy, but awake. So then I was really irked... THRILLED to see him, but irked. Why in the world was I bounced every which way if he was going to be wheeled past the waiting room!?

So they wheel him down the hall to Recovery Phase 2, where he's allowed to try to use the bathroom and to get dressed. This part made me realize that I want to be married to Joe when we're 100 years old. Helping him pull up his underwear and pants, put on his sock and shoe for him was pretty much the funniest thing to happen to me all day and it was certainly the first time I really laughed in several days. I get him all dressed and went down to get his prescriptions.

Now this is the weird part. The Army LOVES giving out Motrin. It's like the favorite drug. So of course, they gave us a friggin ton of it - probably more than he'll ever need. They also gave him MORE percocet (he's been taking that for WEEKS already for the pain lol) and then stool softeners since supposedly, percocet can make you constipated (um...he's been taking it for several weeks and trust me.. this hasn't happened! lmao).

Anyways.. I get back to him and for the first time...... EVER in our marriage, the Army wanted MY signature. I had to sign away because he could be deemed to incoherent to do it. So shocking. I swear.. if I needed my uterus removed, I would need Joe's signature. TriCare and the Army are so weird.

So I get him all ready to go, and need to go get the car. Great....this is the part I knew would suck. But I actually surprised myself. I got Hailey in her car seat and folded the stroller back up - stuck it in the back of the car. I got in and adjusted all of Joe's nonsense and turned the car on. Then I sat there for a second so I could remember how to drive (dear lord.. it's been at LEAST six months since I've driven lol). A slight push of the gas and I remembered how to drive and managed to get up to the front so Joe could get into the car.

Apparently, he doesn't like me driving. He was all concerned about how well I could see. I'll admit, I cannot see as sharply as possible right now, but I can totally see well enough to drive. Actually, it was a lot better than I was expecting. Road signs with small wording on them is my problem...but I didn't need those anyways!

I swung by Checkers and got us some lunch...it's what he wanted. Got us home, grabbed Hailey and took her inside to her bedroom so she would be safe and then ran outside for Joe. I helped him down the stairs outside and got him into his bed set up in the living room, then finished unloading the car. We had some lunch (actually, by this time it was like 5pm and was really more like dinner.. but neither of us really had eaten all day). I put Hailey down to sleep. She's STILL sleeping right now.

She was an absolute ANGEL. I swear, I couldn't possibly have been blessed with a better child. We were in that waiting room from 6am until 2pm - EIGHT HOURS. She cried ONCE. She was really, really tired and I didn't blame her. She had been up since 4:30am! She had about a 30 minute nap in her stroller. I laid it back and gave her a warm bottle and she passed out for a little while. She really needed it. Otherwise, we watched some of the movies in the waiting room and she WAVED at people all day. Well, her "wave" is more of a Hitler wave where she just holds her hand out at people. lol But still.. she gets the idea of what it's for.

Anyways... Joe and I took a nap - together for a while, and then I went upstairs to be closer to Hailey in case she woke up. Joe got up a little while later and was up and about - although he has a soft cast and is pretty pissed about it because it's so much easier to bump his foot and get hurt.

They gave him THIRTY days leave. I think that's bullshit. I thought the 6 weeks we were originally told wasn't enough... thirty days is insane. He thinks it's because they ended up not having to drill into him. I don't really care. He is going to have to learn how to walk again no matter what. But he's up and getting about on his crutches.

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