Chapter Four: Surgery Day Arrives

Wednesday, January 15

Wednesday nite we finally got on the road before 9 p.m. My passengers (Mom and Dad) napped, and by Calhoun, my brother Gary had called.

"We've secured the baby." He had picked up my nephew Trey, Ann, and baby Jack, just flown in from Kansas.

Right after we checked in, Gary showed up with his entourage.

None of us had met Jack before now. I was thrilled to snap photos of Mom and Dad with their first great-grandchild. We enjoyed visiting. We suddenly realized it was 1:30 a.m., with a 5:30 pre-op call for Dad. We bid our visitors goodnight. Trey promised he'd see P-Paw after his surgery.

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4:15 a.m. came too quickly. We sat in the waiting area for surgery patients' families and watched the tropical fish swim in circles in a rectangular, polished wood-based tank. 2 1/2 X 4 X 3 feet didn't seem enough space for all those fish, but they brought a peacefulness to that corner of the room. Chairs were arranged in all sorts of perpendicular and parallel seating areas. Throughout the day, people snored, chatted, talked on their cells, and huddled in groups to pray with pastors.


Dad followed the nurse to surgical prep, and after a long wait and an inquiry, Mom and I were led back to preop. The only rude person we've encountered at Emory was the nurse who hurried us to give Dad our kisses and say our goodbyes, presumably because she was more worried about the schedule than the people whose lives it affected.

Emory uses a computerized system to help update the waiting families. We had a pager, which we turned in before returning to the hotel for Mom's medication and to eat breakfast. For the time being, we left cell phone numbers. We were back in a short time. The big-screen TV used icons and codes, for which every family received a key with their patient's case number. Periodically, I would check the screen, and it would read, for Dad, Pt in OR, meaning Patient in Operating Room. We didn't expect his status to change any time soon, as we'd heard of this surgery taking 8 hours in the "old days" and up to 6 with Dr. Sarmiento.

Dad hadn't entered the OR until, we guessed, around 9, so we didn't expect to hear anything at 11:30. I returned from the restroom, and the helpful young man who had answered all our questions so patiently pointed me to a consulting room in the corner, telling me Mom was waiting there to speak with the surgeon.

This frightened me a bit, but I knew the interest Dr. Sarmiento had taken in Dad's case, with him also being a physician. We didn't wait too long before the surgeon entered from another door opposite the waiting room door. He was dressed in his blue scrubs, wearing his blue matching cap. He smiled and told us in his rich Colombian accent, "Everything went very well. We already did frozen sections of the margins [the edges removed around the part of the pancreas where the tiny tumor lay]. All those were negative for cancer. He lost little blood, needed no transfusion, and will not need to go to ICU. We'll have the final pathology on lymph nodes and the grade of the cancer by next Tuesday or Wednesday."

We expressed our gratitude and soon were able to see Dad briefly in recovery. It took a while for him to get a room, but he got one worth waiting for--a room with a view! 1009 is in a corner, with huge windows that meet at the vertex. The red roofs and pink and white marble of Emory's medical complex beckon out of one side and a tennis court, distant skyscrapers, and a mountain lure the eyes from the other side.

Dad wasn't too alert this first day, but he was happy enough that his epidural pain meds were keeping him comfortable.