Angiogram
On November 3rd, 2004, I sent my daughter to the school and visited Principal’s office. I handed the letter I wrote the day before and explained the circumstances briefly. She told me that so-called home school could be available if needed. Then I went to Kota’s class and handed the same letter to his teacher. The teacher kindly agreed to have some time to talk about the issue in the afternoon.
I went back home and left home again with my wife and Kota. I dropped by my work office first. I wanted to meet my boss as I sent an e-mail the night before. He kindly said “take as much time as necessary”.
We arrived at Stanford Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at 9:30am. The first thing to do was pre-op, which I believe stands for pre-operation. It was a kind of health exam, although the surgery was still 10 days away… Blood sample was taken around 11am. Then we moved to the different building and had pre-op again for angiogram. Kota complained about hunger because he had eaten nothing since last night. But there was nothing to deal with it. He could not even drink water after 10am, so poor. Finally, anesthesia started around 2pm, and he was sent to angiogram. In case of children, this exam is done under systemic anesthesia. The exam itself usually takes about 2 h. So Kota was expected to be ready to go home by around 9pm. At this moment, I went back to school. My wife stayed in the hospital, received a pager, and waited to be paged when everything was done. I picked up our daughter and went to Kota’s class to talk with the teacher to explain the story. The teacher proposed to prepare some package just in case Kota got bored when he is at home. After that, my daughter and I went back to the hospital. The procedure was finished around 5pm. I could meet Kota in recovery room. Since kids are not allowed to enter the room, father and mother met Kota in turn. Suddenly, the doctor told us that Kota should stay at the hospital that night because it would take until 11pm to be fully recovered. We said we never heard that thing. But the doctor said Kota would have to be still at least for six hours after waking up from anesthesia, he could go home after that, but 11pm would be too late. Actually, he had an appointment for SPECT next day at 10am, so we would have to come back soon anyway. So we decided to stay at the hospital, following their suggestion.
Kota was moved to a ward upstairs around 6pm. It was nice, large, and clean single room. There was a bathroom, too. I wondered if it was common in this country, because in Japan this kind of room could be a room for VIP or the rich. Kota finally started to eat and drink, but he still looked tired. Starting from jelly drink and apple juice, he then had some snacks and sushi-roll (NORIMAKI). My wife and daughter were also there since it was supposed to be a day trip, however, they had to go home because there would be school next day. So I sent them home. In the mean time, Kota was waiting alone. On the way back to the hospital, I bought some foods. We did not prepare anything because we did not think we would stay there.
When I came back to the hospital, somebody was sitting bedside. He was a volunteer. While parents were away, he kindly attended on Kota. However, Kota told me later, he was just sitting there without helping out anything even while dinner was served. Mmmm… Because the dinner provided by the hospital did not match his appetite very much, he ate some sushi-roll I bought. He also had hot tea brought from home and said, “I have never felt that tea is so delicious.” There was a TV and VCR in the room, and video library of the hospital had a bunch of movies. Kota picked up “Holes” and “Poke-mon”, and watched both. Basically his condition was fine. Only thing that suffered him was a little pain around right thigh where the catheter was inserted. He finally slept around 1am.