Scary Hospital Stay

I think the worst part of being in the hospital was the confusion and uncertainty. I got to my room and we got the tv turned on in time for Wheel of Fortune and Survivor. I was so relieved. It wasn't just being able to watch my favorite shows, it was being alive. I really wasn't sure despite all the information I had received whether or not I was about to drop dead. The angiogram the next day (I later found out) was to rule out an aneurysm or blood clot.

I kept my cell phone on mute and texted people the hospital phone number. Of course, we had no idea that they stop letting the phone ring through at nine. The nurse who helped me turn it on, in fact, reassured me that the ringing would not wake me up in the middle of the night because he was pretty sure they turn the volume of the ringer a little lower. Hmmm. So no one called me and I got a lot of text messages. Sachi really did not want tocome home because she had just been home the weekend before and felt like she was living on the train. We finally got to talk (I broke the rules and used the cell) and she was able to look up all these new terms for me on the net - angioma, cavernoma, cerebellum, etc. She said the only time the surgery was possibly fatal was when the cavernoma was in the brain stem. I thought I was golden because I remembered the doctor saying it was between the cerebellum and the brain stem. No idea which doctor of course. There was one guy I started calling Ben Casey because he had a doctor's bag, like the old-fashioned kind that opens in the middle. Okay that was not his name but at least I recognized having seen him before. He nudged out some much older bearded guy when I was waiting aroung in the ER. "Dr. Casey" kind of looked like Matt from Beauty and the Geek.

More later...