Operation was a success

[dreamshark]

And yes, the patient lived. I haven't seen him yet, but have talked to the surgeon. There were no surprises, which is generally desirable where surgery is concerned. As planned, he bypassed 2 arteries.

And he was able to get all the raw materials he needed without going into the leg, which is apparently the best scenario. One length of artery came from the left forearm, the other from a non-essential artery inside the chest cavity (who knew there were spare parts just lying around in there?).

I have been hanging around for about 40 minutes waiting for somebody to come get me and lead me to my husband. I think it's time to go out and find him. This is an excellent hospital and the procedure seems to have gone perfectly smoothly, but from the spectator point of view the scene transitions need some work.

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Comments

[ssussminh.livejournal.com]

Whew!
I've been worried about Richard and you all day at work.
I'm so happy it went well.

A non-essential artery in your chest!?!! Who knew, indeed!
And it still bothers me that they take arteries out of your arms and legs.
Don't you need them?

Sue :)

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Apparently there are a lot of redundancies in the cardiovascular system. And then they go and design the heart as a single point of failure. *d'oh!* What were they thinking?

As for the arms and legs - apparently there IS a redundant artery in the forearm. However, when they take vessels from the legs they take veins, not arteries. One of the questions the surgeon asked was whether R had any history of varicose veins or deep vein thrombosis. If the answer were yes I'm guessing that would be a counter-indication for taking veins from the legs.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Apparently there are a lot of redundancies in the cardiovascular system. And then they go and design the heart as a single point of failure. *d'oh!* What were they thinking?

Ah, yes, "intelligent design."

Based on recent experience, I don't think 40 minutes is too long to wait; even with P's outpatient skin graft, I think he was in the recovery room longer than that, and they generally don't let family see the patient till they're out of the recovery room.

Again based on recent experience, but with two hospitals other than the one Richard is in, I think that generally the medical care is much better than the administrative/staff/etc. performance.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Oh, he was out of recovery by the time I made that post. The 40 minutes was the interval between when they told me he was in the ICU and ready for me to visit him and the time when someone came and got me (which happened shortly after I posted). I wasn't in that big of a hurry - I've seen people in the ICU before and it's no treat. It's just sort of the closure thing you've been waiting for all day to verify that your loved one is still alive.

I didn't really have any complaints about the staff. Everybody we interacted with was friendly, cheerful and competent. And all the nurses were effusive in the praise for our surgeon, Dr. Dyrud. Always a good sign. There just seemed to be a couple of different theories on how the beeper system was supposed to work and when I was supposed to go where.