Hospital Day

Today, I am accompanying my mother to her surgery. We leave precisely at 6:30 a.m. to check in at 7:30. Everything is signed, sealed and delivered. The surgery should take all day, since they are using the Moh’s procedure, a technique that tests each layer, to be certain that all the cancer is removed.

To prepare, mom had the traditional laundry list of things to do. She is on so many medications, that she had to bring a list to the surgeon and mark off which ones she had to stop taking prior to the big day, in order to get the right blood test results. That was difficult. After taking these drugs for so long, on schedule, it was hard for her to not take them at all. I mentioned that if she kept track of when she was supposed to take each dose, and just mark it off (in a different color no less), she would still be keeping track. That seemed to help.

Next, she had to get all the paperwork signed. After all the crossing the T’s and dotting the i’s, it was ironic that there was no mention of a living will. Luckily, she has one. I made copies for her to bring, to give to both my husband and I, and one to put in with her papers for the check in.

Her horrible, biting dog, that also came with her to live with us, has to be fed (on a rigid schedule) throughout the day. She gets approximately 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of dog food, dispensed in three timed feeding, each day. This results in a ravenous dog, who actually snaps the air as you gesture, thinking that you are tossing food around. I do have a 20 month old, so food is actually tossed, but I digress. Please, if you have a dog, teach it to behave, in case you have to live with another family. Just do it.

So, I have to feed the dog, medicate it (sadly, it only receives a benign medication and not a sedative), let it in and out and keep it happy. A true expression of my love. Trust me. My plan is to get a nice, fluffy picture of this hateful dog, to make a photo mug for her for Christmas. So tomorrow is the day for that, too.

Because we can not possibly leave the kids for the entire day, the plan is for me to bring her to the hospital and my husband to come at noon and be there when she is discharged. I thought that when she woke from anesthesia, in her confused state, she would be slightly more reassured by the sight of her beloved son and not the interloper daughter in law, who keeps having dreadful children.

I am worried about her for sure. I am worried that she will be very upset when she sees how much he had to remove. The doctor was very clear about how much the cancer covered, but she was really not interested in hearing any of it. He showed us photos and how he was going to use a special technique to turn a flap of skin to cover the area. She just didn’t want to have the surgery in the first place, and basically shut down for the rest of the discussion. I worry about her frame of mind, since she is already pretty distraught. We will see how it goes. Wish us luck!