April 3 - continued

Lynn's carotid surgery finally go underway at 3:15. This was about 2 hours later than what we were told, but this is not unusual, I hear, when the surgeon has heart operations scheduled. Dr. Blossom came in and initialed her neck...I guess there may be circumstances where more than one surgeon may be involved, so they have to "tag" their turf. The anaesthesiologist also came in and talked to her. She had problems with nausea with her first surgery back in 1991, and he wanted to hear about that. Susan came in and sat with us for a while. She finally left so she could sit with Dale, and then called back just as Lynn was on her way out the door.

Now, it is almost 4PM. She is still in surgery. Procedure should take about 1 hour. After that, there is some time where they get her into recovery. One of the nurses said that it might be quite a bit longer than that, since the hour time line only applies to the surgery itself. The waiting room here has a number of monitors scattered around that keep people apprised of the patient's status. Each patient gets a number. Lynn's is 59229. When she gets out of surgery, hopefully they will update the monitor and I'll know that she is done. Then, it will just be a matter of hooking up with Dr. Blossom and hearing how things went.

One of the things I really pushed was that I wanted them to know that Lynn is deaf in her right ear. They will wake her in the operating room, and will ask her a series of questions to answer that will help them tell if she has had a stroke. If something in there is up against her good ear, and she can't hear them, they could think that something is wrong, when it really isn't. Of course, our big joke is that, with all the increased blood flow, wouldn't it be weird if she got hearing in that ear back after all these years???

4:03 - still in surgery, according to the monitor