And after all that, on my two post op visits all three patients were very happy and grateful to have had their surgery.
The one whom I couldn’t get a spinal in at all was very apologetic for causing me so much trouble. Bless. They were all comfortable anyway, probably because the surgeon drenched their joints in local anaesthetic at the end of their operations.
Strictly speaking, according to our hospital outsourcing guidelines, two of them weren’t appropriate to have been done by us. The first two ladies had BMIs over 40, on the height and weight done by the nurses on admission. Both were shorter and heavier than stated on their preop paperwork. Had someone somewhere along the line massaged the numbers to make them fit the criteria? Who knows, but it was nice to get them done in any event.
The best news is that my colleague’s father has taken a turn for the better. Instead of passing away, he was up watching the Olympics yesterday morning, and the hospice nurses had gone home again. Lovely.