Ah, the joys of hanging out in a hospital waiting room. It’s so incredibly splendid being surrounded by hot, uncomfortable, nervous people of all sorts as Judge Judy (or some snarky bitch-judge equivalent) blares on the ancient TV in the corner. These seats are very comfortable as well. I see they decided to go with the “let’s give everyone lower back problems so they have to come back and pay us to fix them next” models. If my dad wasn’t in surgery right now, I think I’d still be sitting here enjoying my day off of work. That’s how amazingly fun it is.

As my good friend Rebecca pointed out to me once, sarcasm is sometimes very hard to get across in writing. So, for all of you folks that are a little slow on the uptake: I’m lying. This sucks.

Hard.

About a month and a half ago we found out my dad had prostate cancer. “Wonderful,” we all thought. Well the day has come to get things taken care of. For the last 4 hours he’s been in surgery having his prostate removed.

I can only image what’s going on in there… the doctors sure have painted an interesting picture of how this procedure takes place: supposedly they’re using some kind of crazy termintaor-esque robot arms to go in and get things done. While I’m having flashes of Dr. Octopus tearing my fathers insides out like they’re multicolored handkerchiefs through a magician’s sleeve, the doctors are assuring us that it’s the safest way to do this kind of surgery. Just as long as the thing doesn’t become self-aware, I’m cool with it.

The family was able to visit and see him before he had to go off and get sliced and diced, and he seemed to be in pretty good spirits before being wheeled away. I’m sure the pain meds were kicking in by then… he was jiggling his hospital bracelets above his head while giggling. I couldn’t help but laugh… but I sure could use some of what he got right about now.

Overall, I don’t find hospitals to have a very enjoyable environment. The last time I was here, I was the one in the hospital bed completely aching to get home. Of course that was quite a while back… 9 years ago when my appendix burst and enjoyed not one, but two stays here at St. Mary’s in Grand Rapids. Certainly not my happiest of memories and sitting here in the waiting room I’m getting a dose of what the rest of my family must have been feeling at that time.

“Judge Whoever” has changed to the mid-day news. A nurse has been out every hour or so to let us know things are going good. At the moment my mom, sister and aunt Mern are deep in discussion… while there’s definitely an air of nervousness around us, just having my aunt around takes a lot of the edge off. As far as I know there has never been a time when she and mom have been together and were not laughing.

Things should be winding up here anytime. They said it would take 4 to 5 hours and the 5 hour mark is quickly approaching. Now,to just wait for the surgeon to let us know how things went…

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Well, I’m relieved to say the surgeon just came out to let us know that my dad pulled through just fine. He’s in recovery and should be able to go home tomorrow if all goes well over the night. I guess he had to break out the extra-long robo arms to get past my dad’s beer belly. My mom doesn’t seem very pleased that he said that… but me, my sister and my aunt can’t stop laughing.