OPs and No-OPs

I'm finally home from the hospital. Things went very well, luckily far better than the docs had prepared me for. My insides are now conveniently rearranged and, I hope, will function well in the future.

First off, I wish to make it clear that the doctors and the medical care here in Germany are extremely good, and I feel lucky to be here to benefit from the medical system.

But how the Germans run a hospital can be quite an adventure at times. The hospital I was in kept me both entertained and on tenderhooks from admission to discharge. The right hand often had no idea what the left was doing. I could never be sure of what was (not) going to be done next. Decisions were made and unmade at the very last second, and then I often had to wait and wait for a new decision.

For example, on the day my surgery was scheduled, the nurses told me I would be taken down to the operating room at about 9:30. That was fine: I like to know these things.

But then 9:30 came and went. Finally, at about 11:00, a nurse came into my room. I was expecting her to tell me to get ready for surgery. Instead, she told me that I first had to go down for some last-minute X-rays in a far, far corner of the hospital (this was a 1200-patient facility).

So I go there (it took me 30 minutes to find the place). As soon as I got up on the X-ray table, the operating room called, saying they were ready for me.

The X-ray techs rushed around to finish me up as fast as possible. Once through, they sent me back up to my room so that I could be wheeled down to OP on my bed. At 12:00, I got back in bed...and waited. Nothing happened.

Suddenly, at about 12:45, a nurse came flying in to give me the standard pre-op meds. Promptly and finally, I got wheeled off to OP.

After I was rushed into the OP room, the nurses there wheeled me alongside the operating table and started to move me onto the OP table. Suddenly, someone came rushing in and screamed "STOP! STOP! STOP! We have to do Patient X first!"

The ever-patient, ever-rushed nurses moved me back into my bed and huddled in the corner for a few seconds on what to do next. They ultimately decided to wheel me over to a post-op room until the OP room was REALLY ready for me. The next thing I knew, my bed was flying down corridors and more corridors, eventually ending up in some distant room in another corner of the hospital.
The nurses wheeled me in, and then some fellow appeared to connect me to an EKG machine. He applied the pads to my upper torso and switched on the EKG machine. It (but fortunately not me) was dead.

The fellow uttered a series of expletives and started unplugging and plugging back in various cables. He checked the system again. Still dead.

The guy rushed off and reappeared a few minutes later with a set of different cables. He detached the old cables, attached the new set, and turned the machine back on. Success! The device was finally up and running.

At that point, a nurse appeared, and the EKG guy rushed off to some other patient. The nurse told me she needed to insert a needle into a vein to set up an IV.

I told her "Good luck!" I have very bad veins, and it usually takes even an experienced medical person at least two stabs to successfully find a vein.

The nurse stuck me in my left arm. No luck.

She stuck me again in my left arm. No luck again.

She started to get flustered and moved to my right arm. She stuck me again. No luck.

She apologized profusely, then disappeared in search of a phlebotomist who was especially good at bad veins.

Fortunately, the (very strong) pre-op meds I had taken earlier finally kicked in. They knocked me out completely. I have no idea how I eventually reached the OP room, but that was just fine with me.