How about I embarrass myself completely {as if I haven't already with the show I put on at the hospital on Thursday} and tell you all about it! Shall we??? Here we go......As you most likely read below, Rob's surgery ended up lasting about 4.5 hours- much longer than anticipated. So after the 3 hour mark passed, I grew anxious and more nervous and scared with each passing minute. I was "fine" {whatever "fine" means when your husband is laying on a metal operating table, intubated, while the doctor hammers and chisels away at your husbands face and later says "it's like working under the hood of a car, the way we lift the nose skin up"}. Anyway, I was "fine" the first 3 hours of the surgery because I knew it was going to be 3 hours. But when his original OR nurse came out and told me that A) Her shift was over and she was leaving and B) That Rob's nose was completely jacked up and the doctor was having to make on-the-spot decision about how in the world to put him back together and had no idea how much longer it would be because the doctor was so focused he wasn't talking, I became ridiculously nervous. So much so- that I was 100% ready thrust my arm at the OR nurse's face (elbow pit side up) and demand that she provide me with an IV with a Xanax drip, I kid you not. So what did I do instead?? In true Amy fashion I began to panic and every thought went through my head in about .000001 seconds. i.e, He's back there and this surgery is going to go on for hours and hours and the doctor is going to be so sleepy and finally come out and tell me there is nothing we can do for him except cut his nose completely off and just drill 2 holes in his face for "pretend nostrils" and he will just need a breathing tube forever. And I just knew that Rob was going to bleed out from his nose all over the table and there would be no blood available for a transfusion so he was going to lay there in his own pools of blood and die when the blood finally bled out. Or, that the doctor was going to come out and ask me if I wanted to see him again before he slipped away. I.kid.yall.not- My freak of a strong self thought all of those things. So what is a wife to do???
Call her mom and start demanding things.
Yup. Called my mom and asked her to come by the hospital and get my house key and to please go and let our dogs out and feed them and turn on some lights for me (because, you know, since I was going to be coming home alone-husbandless- I would want some lights to provide some welcoming sight) and to give the dogs a piece of sliced cheese (a real treat for them). So just like any mother does for their child, she totally accepted my plea and came to the hospital and got the key and performed the said duties above. (This happened all around 7:30 PM).
Around 8:10 or so, Dr Rohn comes out to talk to me and explain to me how the surgery went. He told me Rob did really well but that Rob's nose was a hot mess, pretty much. Septum completely shattered, cartilage and tissue intertwined in places it should have never gone...not enough bone here, too much bone there... sawing, cutting, chipping, grafting, sewing...and Ta-Da!!! Rob's done. He told me what to expect the next couple of days and then told me Rob was in recovery and once the nurses felt he was stable enough, they would be out to get me and I could go back and be with him. I thanked the doctor I imagine...ohhhhh...about...hmmmm....132 times and then hugged him and sat back down to take a deep breath and give my thanks to God.
About 8:25 or so I see my mom walking towards me with my key and stuff and so I chatted with her for a second, passed on the news from Dr Rohn and we chatted about the olympics and the most hysterical people watching I had done throughout the ENTIRE day. In the midst of our conversation, the nurse from recovery came out and said "Brown hair, Red Shirt, Jeans and maybe a Camel jacket- you must be Amy???" I said "Yeah, I sure am!! Who told you what all I was wearing?" She said "Rob did!" - I was pretty surprised that he would remember all of that {particularly the word "Camel" for my jacket color- thats a good one for a guy!!!} and be able to tell the nurse so she could find me! Ahem, it wouldn't have been too hard to find me though, seeing as my mom and I were the ONLY two people in the ENTIRE waiting room by this point..everyone else had peaced out and gone home. So anyway, she let us know I could go back and see him and that mom could come back as well. So I grab my 902830192 things and my camel jacket and head back to Rob's room.
I knew that he was going to look rough, as many people had told me to expect. Now keep in mind that I have never had surgery, with the exception of my adenoids being removed when I was 2 which I don't remember and my wisdom teeth being taken out at 18, which isn't really surgery to me. So mom and I walk back there and it's like a ghost town {which in about 2 minutes will become a VERY VERY good thing} except for the nurse I was with and 1 other nurse sitting outside Rob's room. When I first looked at him I wanted to cry. He had a cast on his nose, a bag of ice on his nose, the pulse ox on his finger, blood pressure cuff going on and off, had a cup of juice and some graham crackers, and was the color of the sheets on the bed. They had put ointment on his eyes during surgery to keep them moist, so his eyes were a mixture of tears and ointment which just had me beside myself. My poor husband- and there wasn't crap I could do to make it better. So what do I do?? I stand there fore about 30 seconds while the nurse checks his temperature (which was perfect and normal) and Rob cracks some jokes and tries to APOLOGIZE for having to have surgery. Whatever, honey! The nurse informs us (me, Rob and mom) that he needs to drink his juice, eat the graham crackers and use the bathroom before he can leave. No problem nurse! So I start asking Rob if he can take a drink of juice and he weakly tells me he can and tries to grab the cup. I pick up the cup and hold the straw to his mouth and he softly takes a drink. I begin to set the cup down when I have this ridiculous hot flash come across me. It starts in my head and goes all the way to my toes. My heart starts pounding fast and and I begin to feel like I can't hear very well. I knew I needed to sit down, so I tell my mom and Rob that I'm going to sit down, and find my way to a small chair in Rob's recovery room. I am still hot and having weird flashes of heat throughout my body but my hands were clammy. I look across from me for something to fan myself with and find 2 laminated signs on the wall. They both talked about how to cover your cough to prevent infection, and one was written in English and one in Spanish. So I reach over there, and remove the pushpin and yank the Hispanic sign off the wall and begin to fan away. One of the nurses sees that the color of my own face begins to blend in with the color of the wall. She asks me if I'm ok and what I have eaten that day. I told her I ate an apple and a sandwich and that was it. She tells me to come sit outside and gets me some apple juice and crackers and tells me to sit and take it easy. So my mom and the nurses go back in Rob's room to check on him while he's chomping away on crackers and juice and his wife sits outside her room fanning herself like a fat woman on a hot day. I look at the nurse after she has me SIGN SOMETHING in regards to Rob's care {have NO CLUE what I signed} and ask her what to do since I'm starting to feel worse. She asks the other nurse to get a STRETCHER...yes, STRETCHER and wheels it in and tells me to hop on it. I had never been so glad to see someplace to lay down in my life. In fact, I hopped on that stretcher so quick that I put my feet where my head go and my head where my feet go and the nurses told me once I threw myself on the bed that I did great, except I laid down on the wrong end. Nice.
So I flip around, and they bring me a cold washcloth and my juice and crackers and I hear my husband (20 minutes out of 4.5 hours of surgery) ask me: "Babe, are you ok??? Do you need anything". Yes, again- you have read that right. The gimp husband is asking the perfectly healthy wife if I need anything. To which I reply "no babe...I'm good...I just wanted to see what it felt like to be in recovery, so I'm putting on a show." Truth be told, I think it was an extremely emotional day, I hadn't eaten much, it all came to a climax so quickly, and then seeing him so pitiful and looking so awful was just to much for me. {Or I'm going to chalk it up to that!}
So I lay there for about 4 minutes and immediately start feeling better. I am now cold as can be and sweating, but I am no longer dizzy and I want to go back and see my husband. So I swing my legs over the stretcher..throw away my trash and walk back out into the hallway, and then into the room next door where 2 nurses, my mom and my husband all ask me if I'm alright! "Yeah yall...I'm great...have no idea what went on, but I'm so embarrassed. But I'm good...now what can I do??" The nurses say that Rob needs to eat his last cracker and juice and then try and pee. So we do step 1 and then the nurses get Rob sitting up and unhooked from everything so he can walk the 10 steps out his room into the restroom. I went in there with him to help him, and all is good and I am holding his gown for him, and then I get a hot flash from my head to my feet. Then another one...then my heart is pounding and I begin to sweat profusely and feel like I can't hear. I decide to show my multi tasking abilities and while holding Rob's gown while he braces himself on the handicap bar I throw on the cold water and begin throwing it on my face as fast as my hand could fill up. I kid you not. It's not working and I know what is coming next. I tell Rob that I need to go back outside and leave my 25 minute post-op husband to fend for himself as he tries to get his organs to begin functioning correctly again. Actually, we are both needing our organs to function correctly but he has a REASON for his to be acting up, I do not.
So I drop his gown and I throw open the bathroom door, and tell the nurses "I think I need to sit down again". My mom looks at me and so do the nurses and my mom tells me I have ZERO color in my face, I have no color in my lips and my eyes roll back in my head and I fall out onto the floor of the recovery hallway. Yup- fell completely out. The nurses run over (I am still conscious for all of this) and put a pillow under my head. They tell me I am going to be ok and I start talking and telling them I am so embarrassed. One of the nurses then tells my mom they think I should go to the ER. I shot my eyes wide open and said "No no no no....I don't need to go to the ER, I'm FINE!!!!" Then the nurse said "Honey you have near fainted twice in 5 minutes, so if you do this one more time, we are taking you to the ER" I'm sure I argued back with her and then the stretcher was wheeled out of my "own recovery room" and wheeled out into the hallway. They make me get back up on the stretcher and give me 7up this time and tell me not to talk and to drink. The nurses chat with each other and my mom and ask if I ate all the crackers they gave me. I told them I ate them all and they said "Do you promise???" I advised them to take one look at my thighs and they would soon realize I am not anorexic and that YES, I ate the darn crackers. I then asked them where my husband was since I abruptly left him trying to hold himself up and trying to use the restroom and trying to hold his gown and trying not to fall down face first into the toilet. I then hear Rob walk by me and he runs his hand down my leg and stops at my foot as he walks into his own room and asks me "Babe, is there anything I can do for you". Ahem- HELLO....shouldn't the roles be REVERSED, wifey?!?!?!?!? Should I be the one doing what I can for my gimp husband who has blood running from his nose??? Instead I sweetly reply "no honey, I'm so sorry this is happening and I can't be in there". My mom goes back in with Rob and helps him sit back on the bed and regroup. The nurses let him know he was welcome to get dressed again and asked him if he needed any help- to which he said no...and I politely informed them that I could use some more 7up. So classy Amy, so classy. So the nurse fills my cup with a straw and then they are chatting while Rob is dressing. My mom is stroking my sweat soaked hair and the nurse stands RIGHT outside Robs door and asks me "Is there anyway that you could be....um......" I said NO!!!! No no no no. NO WAY! And they all laughed so hard and she said "well I was just thinking....given what has gone on the past 15 minutes"....I politely informed that as much as I wish that was the reason, I apparently am just a freak who can't see her husband after surgery and has to steal all of his thunder.
Rob gets dressed and it's time to leave. OH! The nurses also determined that they were NOT going to allow me to drive Rob and myself home, so my mother was going to have to drive the 2 of us home and Rob and I would return for our car the next day. Good grief, Amy. So mom leaves to go get her car and drive it up to the front. I get off my stretcher again- after again, feeling much better and having color return to my face. The nurses come around the corner with not 1 but 2 wheelchairs and inform me that I am going to be wheeled out as well. I tried and tried to tell them I was fine to walk out to the car, and they weren't having it. So Rob gets in his chair, and apparently I get into my wheelchair and forget to get my purse, tote, and jacket. So Rob, yes, ROB gets those things and hooks them to the handles of my chair while I sit and sip on my 7up in the hospital cup. We get ready to leave and the nurses say "Are yall ready, do we have everything???" To which I reply:
"We have everything except the newborn that the woman is supposed to be wheeled out with."
{Insert huge bouts of laughter from the nurses here}
So here we go....both of us wheeled out. My husband has nothing except a cast on his nose. Black eyes and some dried blood and it was clearly obvious he had just had surgery. He's content and smiling as we are being wheeled out. Then there comes Amy, being wheeled out behind Rob. Clearly has no bandages, has not had surgery but was forced to be wheeled out holding her hospital cup, and 7up with straw...NICE.....instead of couples massages, we come to the hospital for couples surgery...that's what I could tell people, right?????
They wheel us out the front doors, and my husband asks them to take a picture. So without further ado, I present...us:
