Billy's Belly Button Reconstruction

While the jury is still out regarding whether or not Billy will have a new belly button, I can report that he is recovering from his hernia surgery! The poor guy had to go under the knife on Monday morning, in yet another foreign country. He had surgery to repair a hernia in his umbilical cord (I know, we still have those?!). They installed some mesh to reinforce the wall, so hopefully it won't happen again.

Faithful followers of William Peter may recall that he had an abdominal hernia surgery in Sweden circa 2002 (or 03?). That was during our backpack journey through Scandinavia. On the whole, I must say that the Swedish hospital was far superior in all ways. The upside to the Australian hospital was that he and I could understand what people were saying (and he did not have to fear that he was about to die--based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of gasping noises Swedes make while speaking). The downside, he didn't get those nice, knee-high stockings this time, nor was the hospital run as efficiently as we would have liked.

For example, we were told to arrive at 7am sharp. No easy task for two lazy bums who prefer to wake at 7:30am. We arrived only to sit, and sit and sit. While we sat there, we realised that they were calling forth people one by one to review their records and to take vitals (blood pressure and weight). They took those vitals in the waiting room, in front of everyone. When they called Bill in, it was to a room 4 ft x 6 ft with no natural light or windows. Ick. The nurse asked him all sorts of questions, one of which was, 'Do you have a service provider?'. At first I thought this was a question about insurance, but as Bill stumbled, she clarified, 'Do you have someone at home to take care of you after the surgery?'... so I jumped in, oh yes... 'I can provide the services.' I wonder if they will pay me for that.

Anyway, by 9:45am I confessed to Bill that I had to leave to head to work! So I left him to fend for himself. Terrible, I know. Anyway, more importantly, I did return to the hospital once he was brought into the recovery wing!

He had a slow recovery... before heading home he had to be confident that he could walk up and down the hallway, and make it to the taxi cab without getting ill. This took a long time... I think I called the taxi around 9:30pm, and we were home by 10. The thing that annoyed me was that I was constantly having to orient different nurses to Bill's condition -- and each person seemed not to have read the special notes about his inclination towards nausea. So they gave him pills which made him nauseous and then wouldn't give him the anti-nausea medication. I just couldn't help wondering, would the Swedes have done that? ;)

So he's okay... tired, weary, not anxious to return to the office... will report about aformentioned belly button soon.