#2 - 6:30 pm-waiting, waiting

I got my laptop plugged into a normal phone here and got online in the surgery waiting room. Sure aren't many people around here!

So, here's what happened: Angie was not feeling well this week, progressively worse pain in her abdomen, right side. She went to Patty's yesterday (Thursday) and felt worse as the day went on, calling me and saying she thought we should go to Urgent Care or the Emergency Room.

Her mother, Marcia, was at Patty's and decided to accompany Angie home and stay the night. I looked up Healtheast Urgent Care and found out it was in South St. Paul, right on her route home from Patty's, so I directed her how to get there and made plans to meet her.

The urgent care doctor did not seem to know what could be the problem, said their imaging equipment was out of order, so we should go to the ER if we thought it was something bad, but otherwise she could give Angie some Vicodin to get her through the night. Without any idea what could be wrong, we agreed.

We could not get a doctor appt until 11:40 this morning, and new doctor at the clinic named Dr. Koranne, from India. Very nice guy, very complete, and he seemed genuinely surprised that the Urgent Care doctor did not suspect the appendix based on Angi's pain when he touched her stomach in certain places. In any case, he ordered a CT scan at St. John's Hospital, behind the clinic, and that took a number of hours, of course. We were led from the CT area to the admitting department... no one had told us what they had found, but we figured out that Angie was being admitted.

Nurse Pam said she would be scheduled for surgery as soon as possible, which could be 10 minutes or could be later this evening. Angie was in need of a pump to relieve her Bellaboo-lessness, so I decided to fly home and get it and some provisions for me to stay overnight. I stayed too long, of course, I wrote and e-mail to family and friends, held the baby, petted the dogs, etc., and I was getting in the car to go back to the hospital when my phone rang, it was Angie telling me they were ready for her to go into surgery already! I said if she had to go, I understand, but I would be there in 20 minutes. Well, rush hour traffic slowed me down, and when I arrived 25 minutes later, the nurse said I'd missed her. But she said it was a lady surgeon in there with her, all would be fine, the procedure would not take very long and Angie would be in recovery for about an hour.

That was 1:15 minutes ago-- I hope word comes soon.

T