I woke up around 4:10am, afraid we had overslept... we hadn't. We roused at 5:20... and were walking down to catch a cab by 6:30. We rode to the hospital and Philip checked in and started waiting... I was able to wait with him in a room 'til they had to prep him for the operating room. The nurse said that after they got started it could take anywhere from an hour to three hours... so I knew it would take four or five. They took Philip to get ready at around 9:10am so I went down to the waiting room and started watching the clock.

By 2pm I was beginning to get a little worried. They said he was still being worked on but that everything was fine. Philip's doctor (who's really cute) came down at around 3:30pm and told me that Philip's operation went fine... he grafted a bone (that had a vein on it) to the bone that was broken but hadn't healed. The vein would suck blood through and hopefully complete the healing. This operation has no guarantee.

The sweet old gay man who worked in the waiting room called up to see if I could go wait with Philip in his room... and they said to come up but that Philip was having trouble coming down from the anesthesia. When I got up to his room, I could tell that this was a severe reaction. His breathing was labored. Philip's blood-oxygen level was way too low unless he took deep breaths... and he was exhausted and doped up, so you can imagine how difficult it would be to have to constantly think about breathing. The number on the little monitor by his bed was supposed to read 99 or above... but if Philip relaxed or dozed off it would go below 89 and set off an alarm. The nurses told me I had to make sure Philip kept breathing!

For the next few hours I had to make sure Philip didn't fall asleep... and that he would keep on taking full, deep breaths... but whenever he would do that, he would cough... because fluid had built up in his lungs. So they sent him to get an x-ray of his chest. The nurse said it looked like he had mild pneumonia!

On top off all this... Philip woke up this morning with a red spot on one of his legs that hurt him so much he had to limp. He showed it to the nurse in the morning, before the wrist operation... and later in the day when he was having all this trouble breathing, the red spot had grown... and spread, slowly radiating up his leg. They theorized it was a spider bite... or perhaps an infection from a scratch he got while renovating that house he's working on.

Finally, when the anesthesia wore off, Philip looked better... and his blood-oxygen level normalized... and he didn't have to "think" to breathe... and his coughing subsided. They decided to keep him in the hospital overnight, just to keep an eye on him.

He vomited as he began to have dinner... but after I cleaned him up he was able to finish the meal. I think it was a reaction to his anti-biotics (they have him on three different ones) and / or the pain-killers.

I'm so glad I have a bit of medical knowledge due to my being a hospital corpsman for the Naval Reserve a few years ago... It helps in matter such as these. I'm especially glad that I was able to help take care of the love of my life in his time of need.