  I'm finally home. We left for Rochester at 2am Wednesday. I got home an hour ago. I have not slept. I will probably not be coherent. Why is Babe Chandler such an idiot?
Okay, that's off topic. But why? Okay, back to the day yesterday. Grandpa was supposed to go in for an angiogram at 6am. At 9:30, they finally came to get him for that. I don't know how long those typically take, but he was in there until 11:30.
The doctors had told Lois (my step-grandma) that they'd probably just take him right to surgery after the angiogram, so we all assumed he'd gone there. Until they called us back to the same little prep room and grandpa was wide awake and as full of piss and vinegar as he always is. He was getting annoyed having 9 people standing around staring at him, so he told us to go to lunch. Myself, my mother, my dad and my uncle went, and while we were gone, they came and got him for surgery. This had to be around 12:15 or so. They'd told us that the actual surgery would only take about 25 minutes (a valve repair), and that we could wait in the family waiting room on the 5th floor of the Brigh building.
We went. We waited. At 3:30 (with all of us thoroughly on edge), the information nurse called the waiting room and said they'd just put him on the heart/lung machine. Meaning he'd just started surgery. At this point, no one had come to tell us whether or not he needed any bypasses, which is what the angiogram was supposed to tell them. We didn't hear another thing until around 5:45.
They said he was off the heart/lung machine. Which meant they'd done the surgery, but he wasn't closed up yet. They said it'd be about another hour before we heard anything else. At 8:30, after I finally went back to the ICU to see what the hell was up, they said he'd had to go back on the heart/lung machine because someone finally read the angiogram results and found he needed a bypass, on top of the two valve repairs (they never said two--only one was reported to any of us). This all should have been reported to us so we weren't sitting around waiting to see him, and it should have been reported shortly after they'd realized it. Through all of this waiting, we spoke with a family that was waiting far less patiently than we were for news on their 24-year-old daughter.
She had the same surgery as grandpa, and she, we found out later, was not fairing well. It turned out that she was having the same surgeon, as well. Which is why they kept neglecting to tell us everything. They were busy trying to save this girl's life. So I understand all that now, but I was hopping mad at the time. Anyway, at about 11:45, they called us back and told us that the surgery was over and that he'd faired very well.
Everything had gone as expected. I scoff at this, because it had gone nothing like any of us expected, because we weren't told much for a long damned time. At this point, they said he'd be set up in his ICU room in about 30 minutes. 30 minutes turned into over 5 hours. I'd have gone back to find out what was going on, but the doors were locked because visiting hours were long over and you had to have a hospital ID to get back there. When the night nurses finally realized that there was an entire family still waiting for news in the waiting room at 5am (all still awake, and all assuming the absolute worst), they came out and told us he was fine but that we'd have to wait until 8am to see him.
They never said why. The family of the 24-year-old did say that they were probably busy stabilizing her, because it took until about 4:30 before they got word that she was out of surgery. And not doing well. Why get a hotel room for three hours, right? So we stayed in the damned waiting room until 8am. My 91-year-old grandpa was doing better with the same surgery than a 24-year-old.
That makes no sense at all. This man has asthma, allergies, has had a stroke, prostate cancer, and a host of other medical issues. And he survived this. Before we finally got in to see grandpa, the family of the girl were told that she crashed in the ICU and they were unable to revive her. She didn't make it. It really doesn't make any sense.
My uncle said (and we all agreed) that we all had gone into it assuming the worst. We all assumed he wouldn't make it out of surgery. He's a tough old bird though. And I'm happy to report that upon seeing him (he's still heavily sedated), he's going to be fine. I really feel terrible for that other family, though. Life is so strange. 
