Check-in

We arrived on the ward at midday as planned. After coming to this hospital for 21 years, Bernard has recently discovered a much better route from Wandsworth! It completely bypasses the heavily congested Kings Road which is always the slowest part of our journey. It's almost pleasant now. Unfortunately this hasn't helped the parking situation in any way! There isn't any onsite parking and the majority of the spaces in the vicinity of the hospital are for residents only. Even with a blue badge spaces are scarce. Our 30 minute coffee break; a reward to ourselves for arriving early(!) was instead spent searching for somewhere to park. 

It was a bracing 5 minute walk to the hospital. We were all very glad that we'd brought hats, scarves and gloves; even for that short distance.

Harrison's side room was ready so we deposited our bags and started making Harrison comfortable in his new temporary home. First things first, choosing his lunch and evening meal for today! 

He was quickly bombarded with preliminary observations; blood pressure, temperature, oxygen saturations, swabs, ecg

and then lunch (cheese and leek potato hotpot). The nursing and catering teams have all been lovely and extremely efficient today.

There's a policy on the adult wards that nothing happens between 1pm and 2pm to give the patients an opportunity to rest after their lunch. Just after 2pm our nurse came in to take Harrison for the usual pre-op blood tests. I went with him to the phlebotomy room on the next ward. This room should be manned from 2pm to 4pm so that all new admissions can be processed efficiently. Apparently the assigned phlebotomist didn't turn up for work so staff were frantically trying to get a replacement. The waiting room was already full when we arrived and it was another 40 minutes before a disgruntled replacement turned up. Fortunately for Harrison, he wasn't able to wait to be jabbed because he also had an immunology outpatient appointment in the Fulham Road building. He returned to his room with his arm intact and we all wrapped up in our outdoor clothing again to venture round to outpatients.

It turned out that Harrison would have had plenty of time for his blood test as immunology were running about 1 hour 20 minutes late. Nice view from the waiting area window though:

It was however, a thorough appointment with further blood tests being requested.

Back on the ward and there was just time for the original blood tests to be done before Harrison's mushroom pasta arrived.  The duty ward doctor ended up doing the bloods because the phlebotomist had gone home. Harrison's veins weren't very obliging this afternoon and the doctor needed another pair of hands so that she could manoeuvre the needle whilst someone else operated the suction tubes. Bernard willingly stepped in to help:

I didn't fancy anything from the evening menu so popped out to buy a salad from Waitrose or M&S. In doing so, I missed the anaesthetist coming in to speak to Harrison about tomorrow.  He'll be going down second which will be any time after 11am. We'd also missed Dr Rigby with the consent form. He came in whilst we were at the outpatient appointment. He'll be back in the morning before his first case. Our nurse said that regardless of the allocated time of the procedure, all of the patients are woken at 6am for their pre-op shower and dressed in their gowns.  So much for my lie in tomorrow!

It's now 9:40pm and Harrison is checking out the Pizza Express take away menu on his iPad.  His operation time is extremely inconvenient because he'll miss his lunch and he doesn't fancy any of the evening meals!  We've told him that we're not going to let him starve but he's very concerned that he'll miss at least two meals tomorrow!