The Life of a Hospital Waiting Room Dweller

Yesterday was the big day.  My husband, Bud, went in for surgery to treat the prostate cancer that was diagnosed in September.  To say that the last few days have been stressful would be the understatement of the year!  But to say that God showed Himself faithful over and over again in these past days would also be an understatement.  For He has been magnificant!

Sparing you all of the stressful details that led up to the surgery, I am very happy to say that the surgery went very well, and Bud is already back at home recovering! That, my friends, is the result of a bucket load of prayers!

Yesterday was not only the big day, but it was a very interesting day for my son, my daughter, and me.  Because for about seven and a half hours, we lived the life of hospital waiting room dwellers. 

Arriving at the hospital at 10:45 in the morning, makes you a late comer for finding any available real estate in the family waiting room. As we walked into the room, I felt like we were being checked out by a hundred pairs of hostile eyes.  It was if those who had already put in a few hours of waiting were challenging our right to just come walking in at 10:45 and expect to find a seat.

With nearly every seat filled in that place, it took a bit of doing to find a place to plant ourselves for the seemingly endless wait.  Eventually, we found a little spot by a post where we pulled three chairs in a cluster and that became our home away from home.  That's when the "fun" began.

I don't know what it is about waiting rooms, but they often seem to be in the bowels of the hospital which of course means there are no windows.  So after a couple of hours, you begin to lose all sense of time. Is it still really daytime?  It feels like an entire day has passed after only a mere three hours of mind-numbing waiting, so you figure it must be dark outside. And being in the depths of the building also means that there's no cell phone service.  So, eventually, you walk out to where you can use your phone and you're totally blown away to see that it's still daylight!

There is a tricky thing about leaving "your space" to go and make that phone call or to slip up to the cafeteria for a bite to eat (that's a story for another time).  Your group can't all leave at once or a claim jumper might come and take over your little waiting space.  Any leaving has to be done in shifts.  And someone has to stay behind and "guard" your stuff. I think it should be like camping. Once you've set up camp, that space should be yours until you break camp and leave.

The mother in me really showed through yesterday.  Before we left for the hospital, I packed a bag to bring with me.  Originally it contained my purse, a book, a folder for all the hospital paperwork and a bottle of water.  But then I started thinking that with both my kids being there, I should pack a few things to eat.  So out came by book and in went two more bottles of water, some apples, caramels, Tootsie Roll Pops, biscotti, and Triscuits.  Afterall, hospital food is expensive and I'm cheap.  And it would have all worked out great except for the fact they don't allow food in the family waiting room. 

So, here I am with a bagload of food that we can't eat, no book to read and a seven and a half hour wait.  Both kids were stunned that I hadn't brought a book with me.  Hello!  I was trying to keep you from starving like any good mother would do! Besides, I figured we could have some family time.  Well, that lasted until both of them whipped out their laptops and I was left to read year-old magazine articles where Sandra Bullock was still singing the praises of Jesse James. 

After a few hours of waiting, you begin to establish a bond with your fellow waiting room dwellers.  Even if you never make eye contact with any of them, you are sharing a very signifcant day of your life with them.  You look at the different groups and wonder what the relationship is between all of them.  Who are they there for?  A parent?  A sibiling? A child?  And as people's names are called out over the P.A. system and a someone gets up to go and talk to the doctor, you wonder if they are receiving good news or bad.  And you wonder what you will hear when your name is called.

By late in the afternoon, there were lots of seats available in the waiting room.  Most families had already received word and were with their loved ones.  But there were still a few groups that had been there before we even arrived.  There had been one large table where four or five women had sat with their laptops all day.  I had wondered if they were sisters, waiting for news about a parent.  I have done that with my sisters for both my parents.  And when they finally left, a little part of me felt like I was part of their group.

When we received word that the surgery had gone very well, we still had more than two and a half hours to wait for my husband to come out of recovery.  But, those last hours were much more relaxed. I could now listen to an elderly gentleman, who was waiting for his wife, talk the ear off of another lady in the waiting room, and smile, because I could hear my own father's voice doing the same thing. Suddenly, I knew that our time as waiting room dwellers would not go on forever.  No sir, we would soon break camp and move on!