9:30 am day 5 friday cardiac cath family waiting room

This trio of hospitals runs like a finely calibrated clock, or an enormous Santa's workshop where each and every elf knows her and his job and each and every visitor is treated as a five-star guest. At least this has been true for us, perhaps because of the intricate tapestry of the week-long lung transplant evaluation which, we've come to understand, is pretty much a constant here at UPMC. 

The red light told me that Colleen was fully prepped for her cath. Simultaneously I received a personal call on the waiting room phone telling me I could walk down to the "Holding Room" to see her. (See how they go to any lengths?) And they will call me again on that same phone when the procedure is over so I can sit with Col for the hour or two or three that she is resting and recovering. 

In the Holding Room, Colleen was lying in a hospital gown in one of those curtained hospital cubicles. She seemed at ease in the midst of speaking with one of the assisting doctors who was describing the procedure which will entail the use of two wires with which they will explore both Col's right and left heart. (She's had one heart cath before, but only of the right heart.) He told us, when I asked, that the wires are about the thickness of spaghetti. Colleen said, "Angel hair pasta?" "Not quite that thin," he said.

So Colleen is undergoing the cath as I type, or perhaps in the taking-out-the-tubes end phase of the procedure. I'm undergoing the torturous, chronic sound of television, flat screens mounted on the wall in all waiting rooms thus far. Not only is television ubiquitous, but right at this moment it's daytime TV--  inanely shrill game and talk shows which twist my insides to screaming. Would that I could partake of Col's twilight zone.

Purple! 

The line for PUHCL-2013-499 on the monitor has just turned purple and reads "To Holding (post-op)." It's over! The next ring of the telephone might be Nurse Tom giving me the green light to come back to recovery. (Many others are sitting here waiting for their calls as well. We've been taking turns answering.)