Waiting, waiting

Just after 9am. There now seems to be confusion among the nurses on this shift about why I'm under the impression that I might be getting some sort of surgery today, or ever. The bleeding has stopped. Why would they do surgery, and -- if they did -- what would they even do?

This was a brick wall I had not expected to run up against: the lack of support or feeling of any urgency on the part of the nursing staff. My current nurse "Mary", is a bit of a Debbie Downer, saying things like maybe this doctor doesn't even *do* surgery at all (he does: I just looked at his website).

I'm currently voluntarily "NPO" (nothing by mouth previous to surgery) so I'm waiting to eat anything until I hear what the likelihood a procedure is in the near future. But restrictions on eating or drinking are generally 8 hours beforehand. I haven't had anything since about 9 last night and it could be an infinite number of hours until the procedure (that Debbie Downer doesn't personally think I'll need or get). Which amounts to diagnosing and working far above her license. Which is a big no-no in the medical field.

It's a good thing that I don't really get hungry because of the Chemo, but at some point I might need more than just IV dextrose to "eat".

Sigh. Now I'm back to directing my care, as it seems like I always am in situations like this. I'm asking the nurses here to call the urologist, and asking if they can find out what days he does surgery, if so, what times in the day? Again, nurse Debbie-Downer says there's probably no point to that question as "schedules are always changing". Which is total BS. Every surgeon I've worked with (and I've worked with quite a few) has set surgical days.

So, I'm working on plan B. Or maybe promoting the original Plan A from Plan B back to plan A. Something like that. I just called Hunter's office at Mayo and am considering checking myself out of here ASAP and getting to Mayo tonight, if Dr. Hunter will agree to do the procedure but this new, unseen doctor won't -- or doesn't actually see me any time soon because the nurses are not behind my cause.

In the middle of writing this, Jen just reminded me that the ER doc from last night did talk to the new urologist on the phone, so hopefully I'm not relying solely on Nurse Debbie Downer's expert medical assessment if the situation to the doc.

I have a working phone. I might call the Urologist's office myself and ask his assistant the questions that I'm trying to get the nurses to ask. I love cutting out the middle man, when the middle man stands in my way.

It was a good idea to be here over night, though. The bleeding continued off and on for about 24 hours total, and stopped about midnight. The catheter itself stopped working twice overnight, and required more emergency irrigation.

Nurse Debbie downer just got off the phone with the Urologist's PA. I don't rate the actual Urologist, apparently. I wont be seeing him, as it turns out. They'll be here in 1/2 hour. But -- as I'd predicted -- currently no one involved (including the PA) foresees the necessity for any sort of procedure, based on nurse Debbie Downer's expert medical assessment, and their failure to copy my medical records into the system. I'll do my best to convince them otherwise, but based on *that* conversation, it sounds like if I'm going to get his fixed, I need to go to Mayo, where they understand the seriousness.

I find that I really hate being treated like a hypochondriac.

Basically, I'm tired of having this catheter in (especially since it isn't bleeding anymore) and if I'm just wasting time sitting on my ass for no reason and running up the meter on the cost of this thing, I'd rather get the catheter out and walk out. As I put it to the nurse: the only reason I'm sitting here in this bed anymore is because of the hope of seeing the urologist and getting this fixed so that it won't happen again. If Hunter can do it and the other guy won't, I'll head back to Mayo.

I'm getting ahead of myself, of course. I don't know *what* the urologist's PA will say. But I don't want to put all of my eggs in that particular basket.

Someday -- some nirvanic day -- I will have just *one* medical calamity happening at once.