08.26.2010 Thursday Decision Made

Surgery Day! Our constant stream of medical personnel have pointed us in the direction of amputation. What sealed it was the question "What would you do if this were your foot?" Every one of them said "Take it off" followed quickly by a "it's your decision though!" Talk about double-talk!! So the nothing-after-midnight order was made and Dennis seems resolved to enter the futures market with the donation of a digit to science. He was in good humor when I arrived this morning (very early). Since we didn't have a hard/fast surgery time, I didn't want to find out that I'd missed that window to send him off. I have used every media available to keep family/friends updated on his condition and treatment. This is a full time job being the communication hub for messages and updates. After early morning passed and noon passed with no guerney going to surgery and no staff being able to tell us anything, I finally started to research information on my own. (After all I had a testy diabetic who hadn't eaten and drank for 14 hours getting pretty squirrely in a bed he was tired of anyway!) After some calling and phone tag it was discovered that the front half of our medical staff parade had not communicated with the back half (the surgical half) that the procedure had, indeed, been scheduled. So no surgery today. Again with the lavish of apologies that will be added to the blog of misteps we have experienced. After a late lunch tray and glucose at a reasonable level, Dennis drifted off into exhaustion and frankly, so did I. At least the surgery should happen tomorrow and the whole parade now knows the route. Still not 100% consensus, still not entirely sure this is the right thing to do, but it's going to be done. Tomorrow.....