Yachats Oregon Writer Rick Schultze

I wrote a column recently about going from Yachats to Corvallis to get my back repaired. Well that has been done and I’ll give you a quick run-down so you others with bad backs can have something to relate to. Also for your partners, spouses, family and friends who helped you along the journey. I was slotted in early Tuesday morning so we went over Monday night and stayed at the Mario Pastega House. A wonderful facility on the campus of Good Samaritan Health Services. It’s for folks who have family in the hospital or those like me that arrive the night before surgery. It has a full kitchen, laundry, comfortable clean rooms and is extremely reasonable rent wise and about two minutes away from the main hospital entrance. Bright and early the next morning I hit the hospital and began a day of undressing, waiting, being wheeled around on a gurney, taking a two hour nap and waking up in a hospital room with lots of tubes hooked up. I didn’t feel any pain when I first came back to consciousness but a bit later the pain of an operation was there. So like when I had my hip replaced the gracious nurses offered me a bit of relief via some pain pills and I settled into watching TV listening to the chatter of other patients and their visitors. Crystal was there when I first woke but she took advantage of being in Corvallis and went shopping! I would have loved to have gone too even thought I don’t like shopping but I was highly immobile at the time. Since this was my second operation in a couple of years I quickly got into the hospital routine and the continual nurses visits to take vital signs and other readings. I was scheduled to leave in the morning so I ordered dinner from the menu, visited with Crystal after she returned and prepared to zonk out so I could get the night over and my plan almost worked until shortly before ten o’clock when I got a roommate. The poor guy was in pain and it took the nurses and orderlies quite a while to get him into bed. The whole time all the lights were on and watching that scenario was like watching a TV hospital drama except I was in it! So the night was long, I’d doze off only to be woken up frequently by the nurses and as soon as my roommate would see that I was awake he’d start talking to me. I will say he was in a lot of pain and the pain killers they were giving him made him quite talkative. But overall it was a good experience. I managed to get some sleep, the doctor came and cleared me to go home and Crystal and I checked out and took the drive home to Yachats which had never looked so good!! I’m doing good now, very little pain and a bit of stiffness but trust me, nothing like the pain I had before going under the knife! Hopefully if you have to experience a situation like this is will be a good one for you too, it certainly isn’t anything to look forward to but in my case the operation helped! To reach Rick Schultze email:yarick@pioneer.net