Tom H.

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I was afraid that the surgery was going to be postponed for a couple of reasons:

On 4/5/10, about 2 weeks pre-op, I was exposed to poison-ivy during a fire dept. training drill (I'm a volunteer firefighter in the Quinnville Fire district of Lincoln). For the next two weeks it was hot-as-you-can-stand showers, followed by smearing a couple of kinds of topical remedies in the areas affected, which were my upper left arm, left lat and across my chest and part of my tummy where I anticipated Dr Ryder having to insert instruments.

After the first week, there were still weeping blisters on my arm and torso so I took a trip over to Lincoln Urgent Care and picked up a scrip for Medrol Dose Pack, a steroid for skin afflictions. After a 6 day treatment the affected area had lost the blisters and angry red appearance but the skin still was rosy red and mottled as if it had received a chemical burn. I remained tight-lipped about it and kept my scheduled check-in time of 11:30am on 4/21/10.

On Wed, 4/21, Pam (my wife) and I showed up for my 11:30am check-in and met up with Kellie Armstrong, a registered nurse who is the director of Bariatric Surgery Education and runs a monthly support/information group at Rhode Island Hospital. I've been acquainted with Kellie for several months now but Pam has known her for years since she had her RNY bypass during the summer of 2006. Kellie has been a priceless source of information and encouragement and we both love her to death .

So, we're shown to the surgery prep area, I change into a hospital Johnnie and the waiting began.... one hour, two hours. News of a computer problem is spreading around the area. Nobody is allowed to move into the surgery suites. Kellie, who has been with us the whole time, keeping up lively chatter and answering all my dumb questions goes over to one of the desks to see what's going on. Pam takes a walk around the surgery prep area and counts nine patients in rooms waiting for surgery. A rumor of all elective surgeries being canceled was heard and we saw an elderly woman who had been prepped by the one of the anesthesiologist guys being wheeled back to her room. Her surgery canceled.

Dr Ryder, my surgeon, had stopped by earlier, confirmed the computer problem news and that moving patients around without the computers up was out of her hands. She suggested that we continue to sit tight until she had more information, As time wore on we saw more and more patients back in their street clothes, heading for the door. Pam did another tour of the area and I was only one of three patients remaining in the prep area. We didn't know what we should do. Kellie had returned to her office after being with us for a few hours, Dr Ryder was nowhere to be seen and we could see operating room people milling about, wondering if they were being dismissed for the day.

All of a sudden, a spark of hope. A doctor wandered over to the curtain of one of my neighbors, saw the patient dressed and getting ready to leave. He kiddingly barked at them to get undressed and ordered them to get back in bed. Several minutes later an anesthesiologist came over to me, announced that they were going ahead with my procedure and began taking information for his part of the operation.

It was pretty close to 4:00pm. Time was against Pam staying any longer. Her bedridden mother's daytime care-giver was leaving and we had nobody else to fill in. If the original schedule had been kept, I would have been out ot recovery and into a step-down room by then. She had to leave. Dr Ryder reached her by phone to let her know how well everything went.

I woke up later that evening, groggy, as I'm sure most of us do and after some time getting my head clear, I was transferred to a step down room on the 5th floor. When I found out where I was staying, I texted Pam my location and went to sleep.

What a day!