stephanie is: tired…
Yesterday was a rather long day, and I only have the energy for a list today…

• 6:00 – Woke up with our normal work alarm, but staying in bed watching the news for a bit. Came downstairs for some hot tea and toaster waffles at 6:45 as Danny left for work. Looked over some maps to prepare myself for driving to Baltimore. Got dressed. Let the dogs outside to go potty while I moved my car from it’s parking spot to our driveway. Let the girls back inside and cleaned the dog fur off the seats and dashboard of my car. Packed up a bag of yarn and some food for lunch.
• 9:15 – Left the house. Stopped to top off my gas tank for $16. Washed my muddy windows with the gas station squeegee. Stopped at Starbucks for a chai tea to settle my nervous tummy (driving gets me nervous and tense). Turned on my navigation system and followed it to my dad’s house in Columbia, MD.
• 10:30 – Arrived at my dad’s house. Stopped for a quick trip to the restroom, then her took over the driving to get us to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
• 11:30 – Arrived at JHH to find my dad’s usual parking garage a gigantic pile of rubble. Drove around to a parking garage on the other side of the campus. Had to walk through nearly the entire hospital to get to the area my dad’s surgery would be.
• 11:50 –Made it to Osler 7 and let the Out Patient Surgery receptionist know we were there. We settled in to a small waiting room. I started crocheting a baby blanket. They called my dad into pre-op. I ate half my peanut butter sandwich. Another lady waiting sold me candy for a school fundraiser.
• 13:00 – A pre-op nurse came to get me. I packed up and she brought me into pre-op where my dad was all set up on a bed (that was about a foot too short for him) with his IV in. I settled in again and went back to crocheting while chatting with my dad to pass the time.
• 14:00 – His surgery was scheduled to start at 14:00. Instead, a nurse informed us that there was a delay in the surgery before us, and that we had another 1.5 hours to wait. Wonderful. We kept hearing surgeries get cancelled and rescheduled around us, so we were hoping the same wouldn’t happen to him. I got half of my 4′ long baby blanket done.
• 15:45 – The anesthesiologist arrived to go over everything. The surgeon made an appearance to write his initials on my dad’s chest where the incision would be. I packed up again and took both my stuff and my dad’s clothes to the OR waiting room.
• 16:45 – The waiting room receptionist let me know that his surgery had ended and he was on his way to the recovery room. I had finished the body of my blanket and was starting to work on the border. There was no eating allowed in this waiting room, but I opened the fundraiser M&Ms I had bought and was sneaking a few every now and then.
• 17:15 – The recovery room called the waiting room and said I could come visit my dad. I managed to find my way through the corridors far enough that my dad RN spotted me standing there looking lost. My dad was doing well and was in good spirits. However, his new Implantable Pulse Generator (IPG) (that controls the wires in his brain that suppress his Parkinson’s tremors on the left side of his body) hadn’t been turned on yet. He was, in his words, “shaking like [he] was trying to share the bed with an active jackhammer.” After a few minutes, they sent me back to the waiting room so they could continue with his recovery procedures and get his unit programmed.
• 18:00 – I ran out of yarn halfway through the border of my baby blanket, so I just packed everything up. My dad’s RN called the waiting room and asked that I bring his clothes back. While I was there, I signed his discharge papers so he wouldn’t have to worry about signing after wearing his arm out with all that shaking. They sent me back to the waiting room so he could get dressed.
• 18:30 – My dad arrived at the waiting room in a wheelchair (not without his objections – but it is hospital policy) and we headed back across the hospital to the parking garage.
• 18:45 – I paid our parking fee ($10.00) and pulled up to the Out Patient entrance to pick up my dad. He helped me navigate through Baltimore, then I just followed my navigation system to his house in Columbia.
• 19:30 – Dropped my dad off and headed home to Virginia. My eyes were dry from the hospital air and from staring at my crochet all day. I wasn’t used to driving so much so my legs and arms were sore from being so tense. But I made it home without getting lost.
• 20:30 – Arrived home and made myself a quick dinner of toaster waffles, toaster hash browns, and a banana. Crawled into bed as soon as I was done eating.

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