Surgery Recap

I just filled up the Old Dog with his cocktail of Vicodin, antibiotics, and steroids. While he's soaking that in, I'll give you all an update on the surgery et al. It's long--I'm wordy, sorry.

The surgery itself went well--his doctor, J.C. (I won't divulge his full name here), is great--you gotta love a guy who uses Rocky Balboa as a reference point when telling the wife what to watch out for during the recovery period, and who later calculated for us how much money Roger Clemens makes per pitch.

The surgery and recovery took a total of 4 hours. During that time, I ate breakfast in the hospital cafeteria while reading Jane magazine, dropped a strawberry on my white t-shirt, and resisted having tater tots at 9:00 a.m. Then I spent the next 3 hours in the surgical waiting room, reading Hard Times and watching the other people in the waiting room, who were watching everyone else, too.

OD can explain the more technical aspects of the surgery: canthoplasty, orbitotomy, and sutures. The doctor inserted an implant at the base of his eye socket and in the back. There is a conformer in the socket right now; in about a month, the doctor will try to fit the current prostethic in there, and if that doesn't work, it will have to be modified to fit the smaller space.

However, we do not know what any of that looks like right now because his eye is sewn shut--and no, we won't be posting photos of that. The doctor's initial are written on his forehead over the left eye, too. The doctors do that in the presence of the patient, prior to any anesthesia, to make sure that the patient knows exactly what's going on.

OD was in good spirits the rest of the day. I was able to sit in the room with him, and later his mom and sister came to visit. The nurses were really nice and talked to him a lot, had a few laughs. I wasn't prepared, however, for when one nurse held up a clear baggie that contained the prostethic eye and asked "What do ya want me to do with this?"

The pain wasn't too bad because he had a morphine drip, and over the course of the next 20 hours or so, he could press a little button every 12 minutes and give himself a healthy dose. Too bad we couldn't take that home with us.

I spend the night at the Holiday Inn, and when I went back to the hospital this morning, I was very pleased to find OD sitting up in bed, finishing breakfast and watching cable news--that's when I knew he was going to be just fine.

The doctor is extremely pleased with the success of the surgery and very confident about the recovery process. We feel great about it, too. The difficult part right now, until Tuesday at least, is keeping the pain at bay and keeping the sutures clean, which I do 3-4 times a day. Next Tuesday, we go back to the doc's office and hopefully the sutures will come out.

In the meantime, OD's schedule will consist of taking lots of medication, putting a bag of frozen peas on his face, and wearing sunglasses indoors. His appetite is great (thanks for the superb mostaccioli, KJ!), and he sat through an episode of What Not to Wear with me.

If you want to give OD a call, please use our home number instead of the cell. I am also checking his email, so if you want to send him a more personal message than a blog response, go ahead. I'm checking his email and blog a few times a day. I will relay everything back to him.
Also, if you want to visit, please do--just give us a call first.

Now, I'm going to put another bag of frozen peas on that eye, and then I need to work off the two 16-oz. pudding parfaits that I consumed while hanging out at the hospital (not both at once; I split them up between yesterday's lunch and today's breakfast--pudding and iced tea, yum).

OD wants ya'll to know that he appreciates your well-wishes. Thanks for being good pals.