Reflections From the Hospital Waiting Room

As I write this today, I am sitting in the waiting room of the hospital in Waynesboro, PA.   Barbara is having a procedure done on her eye to remove a bothersome cataract - she has a second one scheduled for next month, so we'll be doing this again - and I am functioning on a bad night's sleep in the hotel we stayed in due to some ding-a-ling in the neighboring room blasting a radio, as well as just not being able to rest comfortably.  That is the thing about being away from your own bed on any given night;  regardless of how uncomfortable your bed at home is, and how nice the accommodations are in the lodgings we have chosen (and it was nice!) you still don't feel quite as rested as you would in your Chinese waterboard-like mattress at home.  But, such is life.   So, as I sit here waiting for Barbara's surgery to commence, I am a bit whisker-whipped and am drinking this triple-shot of espresso out of the complimentary machine here in the waiting room.  To add to the excitement, today was payday, and as is usually the custom, bills get paid.   However, that didn't quite go as planned, because I inadvertently "paid" more than what I intended, and it created some complications.  So, after an hour of chewing out our internet provider (whose customer service already leaves a lot to be desired!) and finagling with the bank to make sure I didn't have a potential overdraft of almost two hundred bucks, I finally was able to get some resolution on that.  NOT a good way to start the day, and thanks be to God for free coffee here in the waiting room - a triple-shot espresso did the trick for now.

After sitting for a while with Barb in pre-op, I am back in the waiting room as the doctor is getting her ready for the procedure.  Right now, her right eyeball is dilated to the size of an Oreo cookie, but she is getting along fine.  Cataract surgery is a fairly routine procedure, and it can be done in good time and with very minimal risk.  Also, her doctor is a highly capable physician as well, so she is in good hands.

Yesterday, I got an interesting little book in the mail.  For a couple of years now, I have been following on social media an author by the name of Susannah Lewis, and she has made some very amusing videos of the events she encounters in life.  Also, recently, she recently has given birth to her third child, an adorable baby girl, and if she reads this she has my heartfelt congratulations.   If you have a chance to do an internet search, you will find a ton of her videos on various things on YouTube, as well as her Facebook page, and this girl will literally have you in stitches.  Possessing a quick wit as well as an endearing Tennessee drawl, Susannah's videos have gained some popularity in recent years - my personal favorites are the one where her dog has an unexpected "accident" in a romantic interlude with some sort of stuffed animal, and for his injury, she is instructed to "pour sugar water on it."  Another one that I really enjoyed was a video where she sits in her car - she tapes herself in her car a lot picking up her kids or lamenting the craziness of the local "Wal-Marts" as she calls it - going off on a humorous rant about girls taking "selfies" in her local TJ Maxx.   If you haven't had the chance to see those yet, you can access them at her website, www.whoasusannah.com, or as mentioned through a casual YouTube search which will pull up a treasure-trove of her Southern-accented wisdom.  The book I mentioned, titled You Can't Make This Stuff Up, is her first venture into non-fiction, and in the couple of chapters I have read of it so far, it is excellent - I will post a lengthier review of it later when I have a chance to give it a more thorough read.  One thing she asked on a live book signing last week was that we post pictures of the book for her to see, and this is the one I took in the hotel room and posted last night:

Again, the book is available on Amazon (I think, although someone said it sold out!) and is definitely worth the investment by what I have seen so far.

Back to the waiting room, there are a lot more people in here than there were earlier, so I am at a table over here near the entrance.  This television above my head is blasting daily soaps for the old ladies sitting in here (Young and the Restless or something - I don't pay enough attention to those things to care honestly) and it is a bit distracting but we manage - this isn't the first time I have had to transcend noise and distractions to work on stuff, and probably will not be the last.  Barbara's surgery should be done within a short time, and when she is in Post-Op I will probably going back with her, plus having to call the cab to take us back up to the hotel a few blocks away.  So, I will be brief.  Luckily they have a monitor in here that documents the progress, so I need to keep an eye on that as well.  She will be really hungry I bet when she gets out, as she had to fast several hours before the procedure, so upon her doctor's recommendation we'll be trying out Frank's Pizza for dinner - a good local pizza chain we see all over the area.  It is too bad they don't have Fox's Pizza Den, as I could go for a Fox pizza, but we'll make do.

Well, on that note, I will wrap up for now but will hopefully be back with some other "pearls of wisdom" to illuminate the day of some poor schlub who actually takes my ramblings seriously.  So long until next visit.