The husband had surgery to remove a tumor four days ago. It was an experience.

We got up at 3:30 AM. Already annoying. We left at 4 to get him to check in by 5. He was checked in and ready for surgery by 7:30. That’s when I got kicked out to the waiting room.

The waiting room experience is nice. You have a pager that alerts you to where your human is. They had a person come around with aromatherapy and there was free 10 minute Reiki available. I didn’t do that because they were closing by the time I found out about it.

Surgery started at 8:30 AM. I had his cell phone to keep his family and coworkers updated. No problem, right? You wouldn’t think so.

You’d be wrong.

I told them when surgery started and how long they expected it to take. In less than the expected time his phone started blowing up with messages from his sister who was at his father’s house in Florida. They had already given us grief because the surgery was being done at the Cleveland Clinic. If you know anything about medicine you know that is considered a top 10 hospital in the U.S. His sister is a nurse but seems to know nothing about the greater world because they were convinced that we were going to a local “clinic” for major surgery.

He moved to recovery at 1:17 PM. I let them know. They immediately demanded to know how the surgery went and his prognosis. I told them that I didn’t know but I would let them know when I heard anything. Wrong answer. They were convinced that I was deliberately withholding information from them. I told them I wasn’t. I hadn’t heard anything. The messages started getting nastier. Then I got paged. They had called me through the hospital switchboard even though I was holding a phone that they were texting. The receptionist said that they really weren’t allowed to let me talk on their phone so I told them to hang up on them. They wouldn’t do it so I had talk to my father-in-law. He wanted to know what was going on. I told him again that I didn’t know anything and would text him when I did. The texts continued for a few more hours.

I visited the husband in recovery for a few minutes around 3:30. His doctor was in another surgery so I knew I wouldn’t talk to him for a while. He sent a message that everything went well. I passed on the message. Not good enough.

Around 5 PM his sister sent a message to his phone that had an entirely different tone. She obviously thought she was talking to him now. I don’t know why she would have had that idea. It was so sweet. She was so worried about him. She told him that “she couldn’t seem to get any information from Heather.” I had had it by this point. I had already talked to my mother who was threatening to call his sister and tell her off. I wouldn’t give her the number. I was imagining our families going to war like Game of Thrones. My mother claimed that her sister and niece were dragons based on how obnoxious they can be. At this point I texted her to release the dragons. Then I texted his sister back, “Still me.” Leaving out the word dumbass is my good deed for the week.

He was in recovery for 6 hours. I didn’t want to tell him what had been going on until the next day. He asked immediately. I tried to evade and then told the whole story. He was furious but not surprised.

The next morning I gave him his phone. He read the messages and then called his dad and sister in turn and chewed them out for being rude and disrespectful. Their defense was that they were a thousand miles away and needed to know what was going on. He reminded them that they had all the info I had in the waiting room. I think they got the point that he was mad but probably still don’t understand why. Oh well, his sister has always hated me anyway because I never contacted her to get to know her when I started dating the husband. We’ve never spoken before this year because she would leave the house if left alone in a room with me on the one previous time we met. Not a huge loss in my mind.

Surgery went well. Still in the hospital. Maybe going home tomorrow.