Thursday September 6, 2007 9:46 PM

Jim had to report to Thomas Jefferson Hospital this morning at 9:45, so we got there on time, and we waited and waited and waited. I wasn't expecting Dr. Speigel to start on time in the first place because he's always late. They finally take Jim back about 11:30. The nurse tells me the procedure will take about an hour and then Jim will spend another hour in recovery, so I just head down to the family waiting room and sign in, then find something to do for awhile. I headed out for some lunch, I make some phone calls, walked around the block a couple of times, and at 1:00 I'm leaning against the wall in front of the hospital chatting on the cell and Dr. Speigel passes me on the street. I'm thinking that Jim must be finished, so I catch up to Speigel in the lobby and say, "Are you done with Jim yet?" and he says, "Oh, I'm heading up to get started on him now." So much for starting when they took Jim back, right? I headed to the family waiting room again and told the nurse at the desk, "Don't bother trying to update me....I already passed Speigel on the street." Let me tell you....the whole surgery waiting room experience brought up some awful flashbacks for me.

One nice thing I noticed about Thomas Jefferson...they don't just have one surgical waiting room. Something that had really bothered me about Lahey was the whole waiting room situation. When Jim had his tumor out it was a very serious surgery involving three doctors and a whole day. I didn't know if Jim would live or die, or have a stroke, or wake up brain damaged, or have serious physical problems, etc. But Lahey stuck ALL of the waiting families into one room, so here I was surrounded by families of people getting a bone set in their leg, or getting angioplasty, or having knee surgery. So the mood at that waiting room was bubbly and talkative and very lighthearted because the everyday-type stuff far outnumbered the serious surgeries....okay, not that any surgery is everyday, but you get my point. And the personnel managing the desk, because of HIPPA regulations, was not informed about who was in for what, so here I was a basket case and these workers would just look at me like, "What's the big deal?" And I didn't want to be surrounded by happy-happy-joy-joy people. At Thomas Jefferson they have multiple waiting rooms and the families of the serious cases are put into the "quiet waiting room". Now that's how it should be. But today I kept thinking about the total contrast between this surgery and what I went through back in February and how lucky I was to now be sitting in the happy-happy-joy-joy room. And when my mind would flash back to Lahey I'd shake it off...shake it off...shake it off...and think, "Pam- you're in the happy-happy-joy-joy room now. Isn't that great?"

So I talked to Speigel after it was all done and everything went well. He stretched the throat with the boogie (pronounced "boo-jee"....that word just cracks me up), added fresh collagen to one side of his larynx, and did a bronchoscopy. Jim didn't really have much in his lungs, thank God. Speigel said that we won't really know if the throat stretching worked until three to four weeks from now. And when Jim goes for his post-op visit we'll work on getting him back into Vital-Stim therapy for another sixty days. Speigel will find a way to tap dance around Aetna.

So they let Jim go home today and he didn't have to stay overnight, but he's really, really sore. He couldn't speak at all until about an hour ago, and his voice is going to sound strange for awhile until the collagen breaks in. Speigel said he might cough up a little blood in the next day or so, but we shouldn't worry unless it's more than a tablespoon.