In Which We Start Learning The Ropes

I woke up when my alarm went off at 3:30 in the morning, packed up the car, carefully transferred a sleeping Connor to it, and was on the road headed for the hospital by 4:15. Despite having to pull over midway after the vibrations of the car made the comotose Connor throw up all over everything, we managed to get there at 5:15, at which time Jeremy informed me that the nurse had initially given us the wrong rounds times and the doctors would actually be coming sometime between 6:30 and 7:30. I was Not Happy.

As it turns out, rounds at this hospital are not like rounds at our former hospital, wherein all of the doctors come in and talk to you for a little while about what the plan is for the day, answer questions, etc. Rounds at this hospital consist of all the doctors standing outside for about thirty seconds (and keep in mind there are two patients to a room, so that's fifteen seconds a patient), talking very quickly while a nervous woman with glasses bounces around beside them and scribbles frantically in a notebook. Makes me tired just watching her. So we learned absolutely nothing new and I don't think I'll be quite so worried about making it up in time in the future. They are by far the shortest and least informative rounds I have ever seen, and since Connor has stayed inpatient at five different hospitals, I've seen a lot of rounds.

We did have a resident orthopedic surgeon come by later in the day and let us know the general game plan, which seems to be something like "we'll do this surgery tomorrow, go in there and muck around a bit, and then we'll figure out what the heck we want to do to fix the rest of it because boy howdy, your heels are really, really messed up." In other words, other than this first surgery to kind of prepare the way for future surgeries, they still don't know what the best course of action is going to be and need to do some more talking about it before they are sure. They make the surgery schedule for tomorrow after four o'clock today, though whether or not you keep your time slot or are delayed depends on what crazy surgery-requiring injuries come in through the emergency room on that particular day.

The doctor also said they are going to try to get us a bigger (and possibly private) room, which will be very nice, though I'll be sad to lose the Standard Screaming Woman Next Door. She was feeling very Violated about how long it took them to get her a cup of water this morning. I believe she is running out of nurses and doctors to sue and has now started in on the cleaning staff. I must make a point not to walk past her door so I don't end up on her list.

I came back to the house to take a little nap and because Connor wasn't really happy with the whole get-up-early thing and decided he was All Done at about ten in the morning (read: Total Meltdown). He is currently taking a four hour nap, thus ensuring that he will want to stay up until ten tonight. Since I won't be getting up at 3:30 in the morning tomorrow (and I got a good nap in myself) it shouldn't be as much of a big deal.

Well, once Connor wakes up I'm off to pick up a book Jer wants (and restock myself too)!

~Jess