ICU Waiting Area, UWMC, 5E
We watched this door open and close for 3 hours before we got to go through it.
As planned, Tim and Yoko drove Mike to UWMC at 5am today. After checking in Mike went off with the doctors. The pre-op MRI was over an hour late so the surgery started at 9am (about 90 minutes late). I picked up my Mom about 10:15am and drove over to meet everyone. We all waited in the Surgery Waiting Room for the duration and at about 1:15pm Dr. Silbergeld came in to give us the post-op update.
The surgery went well, it took about 4 hours, no major blood loss or complications. They expected him to wake up in the recovery room in about an hour and a half then transfer him to ICU where we can visit him.
2 hours later we headed to ICU (in 5E wing) and ended up waiting another 2 hours before we could see him. The doctor then told us that Mike had a seizure during the surgery which is not really common but not altogether unexpected. As a result though he’s having trouble recovering. He still wasn’t awake, but he was thrashing about trying to pull tubes and wires off his body, and the nurses were having trouble restraining him.
Quote of the night (via Dr. Gabikian) – “He’s a big guy, who had a seizure during surgery, he’s not real happy right now”
In the end we decided to leave, he most likely won’t be awake for several more hours, they are going to do another CT and another MRI in that time to check on things. Dr. Gabikian did say he’s confident that Mike will be fine once he fully wakes up. Mom, Yoko, Tim, Myself braved the rush-hour traffic, rain, and high winds across the 520 Bridge to get home and be with Mike’s two boys. Mike’s real dad, Dan, stayed for now. Tim and I are thinking we’ll go back after dinner and check in. Seeing him in ICU was a little shocking, he definitely looks like he’s been through some trauma.
Devon made very good casserole for everyone which was awesome!
While we were eating dinner at home, Tiffany (Mike’s ICU Nurse) called with a few questions and told my mom that they did a CT scan and it looks really good. Apparently they had to give him a sedative just to get the CT scan done. So now he’s got the brain surgery, seizure, anesthesia, AND a sedative keeping him out of it. He still wasn’t awake and he was still thrashing about in his bed. The fact that he isn’t awake IS a concern. My aunt, who is a nurse in San Francisco, mentioned that they generally DON’T give brain surgery patients any sedatives since it can affect the process or orientation following the serious.
Scoring him on the GCS (Glasgow Coma Scale), based on what I saw in the ICU he shows up about 6. 8 or less is a “Severe Coma”. I believe that this is all related to the trauma from surgery and seizure but it is still disconcerting.
Later, Mike’s dad Dan called and said that he had sat with Mike in the ICU for a while, just telling him everything is okay and holding his hand and finally Mike settled down and appeared to be sleeping.
Tomorrow we are hoping to get some information from the MRI early AM and some of us will be heading over there pretty early in hopes of seeing him awake. Assuming he wakes up…..
First problem we encountered was the $15 charge for each checked bag. But we were prepared for that since we each had only one carry-on. But wait, as we boarded the plane all of the carry-on space was full and they forced the remaining passengers to check their bags right there at the gate. Fortunately we didn’t have to pay the $15 fee. I managed to grab my wallet and car keys out of the bag before they took it. This becomes important later.
More holding pattern time passes, it’s close to an hour after our scheduled arrival by now and a new announcement. “We are unable to land at Sea-Tac so we are being diverted to Boeing Field”. What?!? Since when do planes divert there? So we land at Boeing Field (aka King County International Airport) about 20 minutes later and sit on the taxi-way for a while. The captain tells us that they are working with their dispatch and will tell us something once they know something. We taxi further in and finally park the plane near the main Terminal.
We congregated as a group and waited for more information when finally an off-duty pilot gave us his best guess. Busses will be here sometime, but it could be a while. Our bags will have to be securely transported to Sea-Tac which will definitely take a long time. The baggage handlers still have to come from Sea-Tac to work on that. We probably won’t get our bags until tomorrow. The first bus showed up shortly after that and took a whole load of people to Sea-Tac. In talking with the crew I found out that the fog blanketed the whole area, Sea-Tac, Vancouver BC, Portland, OR, and Spokane, WA were all diverting flights. We were actually supposed to go to Boise, ID as the closest clear airport but we didn’t have enough fuel to make it there. We got on the second bus about 10:10pm. Just before we left we heard that the fog wasn’t lifting any time soon, there were 13 other planes circling Sea-Tac before we landed and some of them will likely have to land here too. Boeing field only had enough parking room for two 737’s like ours so only 1 more plane could land and park. A third could land in an emergency but it would have to park on the runway rendering any further landings impossible.
