Wine Down: Adventures at Mayo

I have spent the last two days partying with my mother-in-law in her hospital room. She had surgery yesterday morning for a partial knee replacement and I have been serving as her official family-contact/nurse/assistant/entertainment/diet-coke-retriever/television-remote-operator. Luckily, she had her surgery at the Mayo Clinic here in Jacksonville which is like the Louis Vuitton of hospitals. We have been having a grand 'ole time together.

Of course spending this much time in any hospital will provide endless entertaining stories. So I'll start from the beginning. We arrived at the hospital at 5:30 yesterday morning, got her all checked in and then they took her away to get her prepped for surgery. Leaving me to entertain myself in the waiting room for the next 6.5 hours. I will say that Mayo is awesome at keeping you informed about what is going on with your patient, so I appreciated that. During the surgery, my husband was still in South America and my sister-in-law was at work, meaning that any important, immediate decisions would have to be made by me. Oh great. Why do people always entrust me with this much responsibility? I'm so special. I guess that is why I am always "nurse" Jacki for everyone in the family (including my bestie).

During my time in the waiting room, the other patient-caregiver/family-members provided some good quality people watching for me. Plus, they brought in a therapy dog for us to play with some of the time too. At one point, there was a family sitting across the waiting room from me that suddenly stood up yelling, "nurse! nurse!". One of their family members (not the patient waiting for surgery) had slumped over in his chair and gone unconscious. Chaos ensued in the waiting room and away he went on a stretcher to the ER. Things calmed down after that. About 2 hours later, unconscious dude was now awake and in a wheelchair. His family members wheeled him back into the waiting room and sat him in a chair, of course, right by me. Then his family members (all 3 of them) went off and left him there all alone. I have no idea where they went. So there he sat next to me by himself. Why on Earth would you leave your family member who had just recently gone unconscious for no reason all alone in a hospital waiting room? I was a nervous wreck. The entire time they were gone, I kept thinking about how this guy was probably going to pass out again and I was going to have to play good samaritan. Not that I'm not fully qualified to save his life with my CPR and First Aid certifications and all that, or that fact that we were in a hospital surrounded by nurses...I just feel like these weird situations always happen to me. So at one point this guy falls asleep in the chair next to me. For the next 30 minutes, I couldn't focus on anything except him. I kept watching him, making sure his chest was continuing to rise and fall, that his coloring looked good, that essentially I wasn't sitting next to a dead guy. Eventually, he woke up, the family returned and I could get back to reading my book.

Finally, the surgery was over, Gina was out of recovery and up in her own room. And for the next two days, her and I entertained all the nurses on the 5th floor with our antics. In fact, when we checked out of the hospital today, the nurse taking us out to the car even said that she was sad that we were leaving. She said that she was going to miss us because we were so much fun. Well duh. Don't you know Gina and I? If it's not fun, we're not doing it. Glad we could leave our mark on the 5th floor of Mayo :)

Of course, being the "documentor" that I am I had to document all the fun we were having in room 549. Don't you wish that every hour you could push a little gray button and have instant cocktails shot into you? Obviously. The nurses were always cracking up because every time the hour was up and Gina could push the button again, her and I would yell out "time for happy hour!" We also enjoyed playing with her respirator machine and ordering lots of room service. Mayo is not your typical hospital. No yucky hospital food or green jello for us, we're having steak and Mahi! Not to mention an excessive amount of diet coke and chocolate ice cream. Plus, going for rides in the harness was always a good time. The nurses were especially entertained by the fact that Gina and I referred to said harness as her "50 Shades of Mayo". Needless to say there was never a dull moment on room 549 for the past two days. I am really glad that I had the opportunity to share in this experience with my mother-in-law. We got to share a lot of intimate moments and our relationship will never be the same...in a good way :)