T plus 90 Minutes

2200 Hours surgery officially ends, and I transfer my little portable personal space up to the ICU waiting room, much smaller but, it does have a recliner, and a couch. Anesthesiologist stops by, fills me in just how stellar of a performance Lis put on through surgery, says it will probably be an hour or so before I can see her. About 15 minutes later the chief surgeons fellow comes by and gives me a bit more details of the surgery and how she is doing. At 2330 hours they let me in to see her. Man they really should warn you better on what to expect. Visually she looks far better than I expected, but man did I have to do a desperate grab for, and put a full nelson* on, major panic. Ninety minutes after 12 hours of deep anesthesia, a person does not act just loopy, they act as if they have major brain damage. It so happened a doctor was there at the moment doing a standard, office style neurological eval, when he was half way through he looked at me, and for the second time in 24 hours I had a medical professional grab my arm.  "It's .okay, this is entirely normal" I looked at her vitals, and made a very conscious note of how unconcerned the medical professionals in the room looked, and realized he was probably right. I held Lis' hand for a bit, made sure she new I was there, to the degree possible, gave the nurse her chap stick and told her it was probably q-24, and that I had that on good authority(Thanks Liz). Went Back to the waiting room, and after about an hour of reading, managed to actually fall a sleep for an hour or so.

Onward...

* A wrestling hold in which both hands are thrust under the opponent's arms from behind and then pressed against the back of the opponent's neck.