Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Or in this case, the dotted line on the floor taking your mom to surgery.

Again, anyone that knows my family will tell you that we never miss an opportunity to utilize our sharp wit and comic relief. So as they wheeled my mom down the hall to surgery, we all took our positions against the wall and saluted as the family matriarch was rolled on by. Come to think of it, I do believe she put her hand out so it could be kissed as she went on by – Big Hambone! :)

After they took mom in, they directed us to the surgery waiting room with a guestimation that surgery would be over around 6:00pm or so. We were also directed to the fancy computer monitors on the wall that allowed you to monitor the progress of the surgery. They had these little picture icons that popped up for each step in surgery – scalpel when it stared, needle and thread for closing and a band-aid when they were moved to recovery – pretty nifty!

Now, I don’t do well in hospitals. I think they are nothing more than a giant Petri dish of sick people and germ encrusted door handles. Let’s just say that the waiting room was packed to the gills, so some of the family moved outside where there was more room to pace.

Every now and then, we would check the surgery board to see how things were progressing and after 3 hours and a half empty waiting room, I found myself glaring at that board wondering why the heck those little icons would not change. Then the family would glance at each other and while you could tell we looked worried, no one uttered a word.

Finally, at 8:45pm, as we all gathered around the surgery board, our icons quickly jumped from one to the other and I think we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.