Well, well, well

I'm back from Toronto, I actually got home around 4 o'clock yesterday, in time to go to the gym with my family for family swim night! Yeah, an echo'ee room with 50 screaming kids jumping and splashing:)

Today I have a meeting in the morning and then I am off to see the new James Bond movie, I am quite the bond freak and I really wanted to see it before my surgery, so this will be my last movie theatre memory pre-op.

I am really appreciative of all the emails I have been receiving with words of encouragement, you folks are wonderful. One in particular was asking about the exact tests done at PATs, I checked my "returned from PATs" post and realized I didn't handle that very well.

At PATs, tests are conducted to make sure you are "fit" for surgery and have nothing wrong with you that would make surgery a further risk to your health. The tests vary from person to person, but I can tell you what I experienced.

Upon arrival and check in, I was brought back to sign a bunch of forms and for them to get a copy of my OHIP(insurance) card, then was whisked off to a little room where a very tiny oriental woman took 6 vials of my blood. As soon as that was complete, they brought me into another room and a nurse took my vitals and weighed me, then put me in a room and went through my medical history. (You do your medical history several times at Barix and I think it is a built in redundancy to make sure they get it all) Then I went off to a one hour Nutrition class that my wife attended with me, then back to another room to wait. Once there, they took me for my Ultrasound, to check my Gallbladder, after that I was seen by the respirologist and given a device to work on breathing exercises with, she also drew my blood gasses at this point. Finally the Dr. came in(not the surgeon, a GP) and she finished clearing me for surgery, kind of a mini physical was done here and then I was told I was good to go and free to leave.

It is important to note that this was how MY PATs went and yours may go very differently, based on your co-morbidities they may require other tests, for example, I didn't have an EKG at Barix, but my family Dr. had me have one and faxed the results to them, same happened with an xray. Some people require an endoscopy, others may require something else. The point is, the testing is very individual, they only thing for sure is that it lasts about 4 - 5 hours.

Well, I hope that helps, sorry to the post-ops who have already done this and didn't need to read about it again:)

L8R Wayne