Successful Emergency Surgery

First of all, I'm ok. Thank you for your prayers.
Second, I'm taking liquid codeine to kill the pain that I have, so this may be incoherent at times.

At 2:20 A.M. today (Tues May 10), I woke up bleeding from my throat again. From what I remember, it was only the second time in a day that it happened, the first time being Sun. nite at 11pm (that was very minor--I was confident it would stop, and it did).
This time, I spit into my bedside garbage can seeing and feeling blood. I went downstairs to get ice from the freezer, and when I spit into the kitchen sink there was a lot of blood coming out. I turned to grab the ice pack and ice cubes from the freezer, and before I made it back to the sink the blood was gurgling out of my mouth--there was so much I couldn't keep it in. Then I spit up my first scab/clot, and knew that it was serious.
Stasia was sleeping on the couch with Emma at the time. Emma has a cold and was up all night, so they were on the couch so that Emma could be upright. I had no time to go shake her awake like I did Sunday, so I mustered three yells, the third loud enough to rouse her from her comatose slumber. As she stumbled off the couch she conked her elbow on the wall and left a good bruise.

She came into the kitchen and asked, "Do you want me to call Dn. Daniel to take you to the ER?" I mumbled, "No, call 911. Call 911." By this point I had probably already coughed up 1/4 cup of blood, if not more. I was starting to feel woozy, and was worried that if anyone drove me to the hospital--friend, neighbor, wife--that I might pass out in the car. Then who would help me? Or keep me from choking? And then the mess! Ohhh, what a terrible thought. At least they can hose out an ambulance.

About 10 mins later the ambulance arrived, and my bleeding had slowed. An ice cube in my mouth and ice pack on my throat worked again to numb the wound. The paramedics suggested I go with them to Mercy Hospital in Scranton (about 30 mins away) where I had my surgery. They said if I needed any further care, that Marian Community in Carbondale (7 mins away) would not have the capabilities of helping me. This was the smartest idea of the night.

So the bleeding had slowed enough so that I could get dressed and go with the paramedics with dignity. I took my garbage can as a spit bucket so they didn't have to clean the ambulance. Stasia stayed home with the kids, but called Dn. Matthew Snowden to ask him if he would be available to pick me up "whenever." He unhesitatingly agreed, then said some prayers with his wife for me (Thanks man!). Any phone call at 3am will probably require some sort of prayer for someone...

After a nice chat with the paramedic on the way to the hospital, I walked straight into the ER exam room 1. No waiting! Woo! The ER doc was upset that they didn't start an IV. Naturally so. My dad was surprised when he found out. Anyhoo, the ER doc pried my mouth open, looked at my throat, then walked away saying, "I'm gonna call Dr. Brutico" (my ENT doc who removed my tonsils). I never saw the ER doc again.
About an hour later, the on call ENT doctor (Dr. Frieman) from Dr. Brutico's office showed up to perform the emergency surgery. He asked how much blood, in measuring cups, I think I had lost. I told him, "It may seem high, but I think it's around 2 cups (1 pint). It was a lot of blood for five solid minutes." He said, "We can either mess around here in the ER, with no anasthesia, sucking out blood while taking a chance that we don't stop the bleeding, or we can knock you out in the OR and get it right the first time." Umm, seriously, that's a no-brainer doc. Give me a good cocktail with a Zophran kicker, then do what you want with me.

In the meantime, while I waited, I was still spitting up blood about once every 1-2 minutes. It was very diluted with saliva, but the wound was obviously still open. So I could have lasted all night like that, but wouldn't have slept. Surgery would've been necessary one way or another. And since I had about an hour to sit and think by myself, I tried praying but was very unfocused and distracted. So I decided to call my parents and wake them up! Hah! "Hi Dad, I'm having surgery in an hour. Just letting you know." It was 1:00 A.M. in Sacramento. My parents are good sports, though. And I figured that if something went wrong, at least they wouldn't be totally caught off guard with a call from Stasia at 2:30am (CA time) that went something like, "So you know that son you used to have? Well, things got a bit out of hand in the OR, and he didn't handle his Margarita that the anesthesiologist gave him, and...can you come back here today?" Yeah, that would've been bad.
I also sent a text message to our father confessor, Fr. Gabriel, at St. Tikhon's monastery. I figured if anyone would have a chance of getting it at 4am, it would be a monk. He didn' t respond til later in the morning, but expressed appreciation for the message so that they could put my on the prayer list. And thank God everything went well.

Fortunately, I got VIP treatment since there just aren't a lot of surgeries scheduled for 4:30am. The anesthesiologist gave me his special cocktail, then told me to count aloud backward from 100. I made it to 78. I wanted to ask, "how far do people normally make it?" but didn't want to lose any time. I thought of it as a challenge. I was thinking, "be strong, you can make it to 50!" By 83 I was obviously slowing down. I'm sure the OR folks have never heard someone make it to 1.

By 5:45 A.M. I was in the recovery room. Only one there. Nice and quiet, so it was easy to get the nurse's attention. At one point I remember apologizing for snapping at her, saying, "Didn't mean to be rude, but I couldn't yell with this oxygen mask on." After that, I normally just had to wave. She was happy to be there cuz she was getting paid overtime for coming in early. Glad I could help.

By 6:30 A.M. I was back in the pediatrics ward, where I started last week (all tonsilectomy patients recover in the Peds unit). After lunch, Dn. Matthew came and got me. He had to miss our Show-and-Tell class ("This is how I spent my summer internship"--seriously, there's a class for it. Big waste of time, in my opinion--the class, not the internship). Aww shucks.

I made it home by 4:00pm, and get to start my recovery over (more or less). Two more weeks on soft foods. Despite eating lots of jello pudding, gelatin, and some delicious milkshakes and bowls of ice cream 2-4 times a day, I lost five pounds during the last week. I hope I hedge any more weight loss for now, and then I'll try to gain back the weight over the next month.

Stasia I'm sure had a much tougher day than I did. She didn't get any sleep. Hannah was awake at 4:30 A.M., so the two of them watched Stargate SG-1 on Netflix. Then Luke was up at 7. I called her in the morning after breakfast and told her I wanted to come home after lunch, so she was able to take the kids to playgroup this morning from 10-12, then go to the park afterward while Dn. Matthew picked me up. Elizabeth Meyer ended up at our house this afternoon with Nonna and Macarius because she was locked out of her house, so our kids played a lot today with their friends. Everyone else was asleep by 8 P.M. I hope they all sleep through the night, because I plan on spending the next few days asleep in bed or on the couch.

Because I finished the rough draft of my thesis, I am working on my finishing touches and no longer have the major stress hanging over me. I don't mind editing/touching up; it's what I've done many times for Fr. Marc at St. John's, and I think I'm fairly good at it. I just hate the actual writing part. That didn't stop me from writing 123 pages about community, though. With 3 appendices and a bibliography, the total thesis will be in the 180 page range (double-spaced, but still). Umm, yeah, about twice as big as I expected. Oh well. I guess brevity is not my gift. Stasia printed everything out for me today, and called it "a blasted book." Fortunately we have a laser printer, so we didn't use an entire ink cartridge just printing it. But we found a few mistakes to correct (which is the point of printing it out), and so that project will keep me busy for the next week or so until I'm satisfied with it/sick of it. But I can more or less relax because the most difficult parts--"thinking" and writing--are pretty much done. And I'm only three and a half months behind my target date...

I'm going to bed now. Thank you all for your continued prayers for us. Please pray for Stasia, who still has 4 kids to deal with since I'm more helpless now than I was a few days ago.

PS: No pictures this time. Just see the blog post from last week with the pics of my throat; not much has changed.