6:25 am Day 5 Cardiac Cath Lab waiting room 3rd floor Presby
Alarms work? Check. Arive at hospital on time? Check--we're fifteen minutes early, in fact. And that includes driving from Thackeray to Presby, dropping Colleen off in the Main Lobby where she gets her chair and oxygen for the day, driving the car back to Thackeray, my walking back to Presby (36 degrees outside; Mom's coat and my gloves keep me warm) and, finally, wheeling up here to the Heart Cath Lab. In other words, masterful focus. Mom, you would be proud of us. We've been the two blonde sprites dancing through the halls, up and down the elevators, and into waiting rooms, doctor's offices, labs, and Presby's 11th floor cafeteria, although we pretty much pack our own food for the day.

7 am Col was just wheeled to prep by a nerdy-cute, thirtyish, comic, possibly gay, intake guy. "Are you conjoined twins?" he asked us. "Is there anything we could do for you today, Mignon? A colonoscopy perhaps?" 

He laid out how things will unfold. "You're going to be separated now for forty-five minutes," he said. "Oh, no!" I said back. He pointed me toward the Family Waiting Room and directed me to watch for Colleen's code number PUHCL-2013-499 to highlight red on the monitor, which is mounted on the wall to my left as I type. Next to Col's anonymous patient code it reads "In Holding (pre-op) in yellow. When it turns red, I'm supposed to walk down the hall to where they've taken her.

Col's demeanor this morning, in anticipation of the cath, is subdued but okay. As a precaution, the lab asks all heart cath patients to bring an overnight bag with them--just in case there's a complication. Our thinking is that, since her test is among the day's first, the likelihood of her having to spend the night is slim. As far as the overnight bag goes, Colleen, with remarkable simplicity, put but a tiny pair of panties and her toothbrushing stuff into the light tote she's had with her all week. Others arrived carrying  separate, seemingly full, duffle-like bags.

Still yellow.

You have read my report of the presence of angels here. Today's first, upon arrival at Presby at not quite 6:00 am: Colleen is exiting the passenger side of the car where I'm already at the ready with the wheelchair. "I'll walk," she says to me. That means, using her portable oxygen tank, she'll walk not ride the 20 yards or so to the Main Lobby Reception Desk. Just then a frail, rough-living man with a cigarette hanging from his mouth appears behind us from out of nowhere and says softly, "Can I help you?" By then, I'm turning around to heft the chair back into the trunk. "Oh, no, turns out we're not going to use it," I say to him. "I would help you anyway," he says.

Red.