Day Three - Post Op

Thursday, November 15

Vati fell asleep early and was mostly peaceful. Around 11pm he suddenly woke up completely disoriented asking where he was and why he was standing. I had already changed to my PJs so I pulled a chair next to him and sat by him, calming him down. He got progressively more disoriented, insisting he was standing, then claiming he was “on his head”. He wanted to pull the cables around his face and neck off and get off the bed and Mutti and I had a hard time calming him. At one point near midnight Mutti raced to the nurses station and found out he had not received his anti-anxiety medication, something he had been taking for several years to prevent panic attacks. She was massively mad and furiously spoke with the main nurse in charge. They rushed around chasing down a sublingual version of it, since Vati could not swallow a pill. We now had a pretty good explanation for Vati’s anxiety and confusion. Still, it took us on and off until about 2am to get him to sleep for more than a few minutes.

Around four am, when he once again woke up feeling upset and disoriented, Mutti discovered the wound drain had overfilled and spilled out, soiling and wetting the bed and his garments. I woke up to the sound of Mutti and several nurses changing his bedclothes with some difficulty! As you can imagine, she was massively angry at their carelessness!

Vati finally fell asleep around 6am, just in time for the resident medics and their morning rounds…!

Mutti and I made it out of bed by eight am when the main medics made their visits to Vati. One after the other they marched in and checked with him. Vati was in good spirits, not really aware of the rough night we all had had. Mutti complained about the lapse of the anti-anxiety medicine and the carelessness of the nurses that caused the commotion at four am. We were told they'd look into the bad service...

The day went by slowly with all of us taking turns napping and resting. Vati had two visitors - his best friend ever and my Godfather, Rodrigo Paz, and a tennis buddy. Rodrigo was curious to see if Vati had opened his nicely wrapped gift - Vati hadn’t because he had figured out what the present was - the slender cob of an ear of corn. I guess the implication was that Vati could use it to help speed up his recovery… Vati was most good-hearted about it…

Tonight, Mutti and I watched the dispensation of medicine rather carefully!