Adirondack chairs.
A large photo of Adirondack chairs was on the ceiling above the operating table. That was a good sign. My son and daughter-in-law had adopted the chairs as symbols of their pairing, posing in the chair for their engagement and their wedding. Those chairs now sit in my backyard.
In the OR, I wondered if they place messages or objects on cabinet tops in case people “die” and come back. The messages function as a test for whether people had floated out of their bodies before resucitation! Life after life. Never got to find out.
Dr. Burke cleaned out a heart artery and placed a stent in by going through my wrist! He was another good omen. He was at Temple when I had my first stent put in. Maybe he even did the surgery!
I was in and out during the angio. I missed the wrist entry but woke up during the procedure. I don’t remember much except the chairs over my head.
Off to a semi-private room. My roomie spoke only a smattering of English. At times the nurses struggled to communicate, but a Spanish-speaking doctor had a long conversation with the patient. The next day, nurses brought along an iPad for FaceTiming with an interpreter.
After my wife, Terry, left, I went back to my new normal: explore bed and TV controls, meet with the nurse and aide, read, EKG (name? DOB?), dance into the bathroom with the IV pole, read, watch Tim Mayza pitching against the Yankees on TV (he struck out two including Aaron Judge!), talk with a neurologist who was concerned that my vision was a little pixelated, order dinner, answer texts and phone messages, read, blood pressure check, eat dinner, watch the Phillies, read, bathroom, go for an MRI (I dozed off several times while in the cozy confines), return to room, blood draw, read, sleep-sort of.
Overnight there was a Code Blue call for the MRI room.
In the morning, I washed up, visited with the docs, got green lights from everybody, read while I killed time before pick-up (finished about 500 pages in less than 24 hours!), said goodbye to my roommate by waving, went home.
I’m guessing this was a $six-figure event.
Back to normal normal.
Into the hospital on Thursday afternoon for heart surgery, out by Saturday morning!
Sat in the Adirondack chair in the backyard and read that afternoon.
Sunday, I survived watching the Eagles.
Tuesday, I ran two miles.
Amazing.
The Q-View 