Picture it will ya. Wake up from a very restless night of sleep head to the hospital at 8:00am to drop off the parents. Head back to the hotel to pick up brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew (after getting lost for an hour in Palo Alto) then again heading back to the hospital to see dad off to have brain surgery. Go to get lunch because he finally goes in at 12:30pm (the surgery was scheduled at 10:50am). Then back to the hospital at 3:30pm (we were told that his surgery would take 3 - 5 hours). When we got back we asked the person running the waiting room desk thingy, "is there any news on Martin Hall?" To which she said "Yes! Someone from the tissue bank would like to speak with you right away because they need something from you." Then we said, "what is it?" She said, "I am not sure she just said that she needs something from you." Well, let me take this side note to say if you are volunteering somewhere like a surgical waiting room of a neurological wing DO NOT TELL THEM THIS INFORMATION AND NOT KNOW WHY!!!! I am not sure if that is something that they normally do but I will say that it is a bit rediculous. So I said, "Could you call her or something!" I was a little angry because not only did I hear it but my mother heard it and I was more worried about how she would take it than anything else. Turns out they wanted to see if we would sign to donate the brain tissue, blood, urine, and whatever else he did not need that they were already removing." To which we said, "Yeah of course." As we were taking a deep sigh of relief. The lady from the tissue bank went into see how much more time he was going to be in surgery then came out and told us about 3 more hours. So we went to the cafeteria (believe it or not it was much more comfortable than the waiting room) till about 6:30pm. Then went back to the waiting room and there was no volunteers anymore so we used the phone and called they told us 2 more hours. So we just waited........and waited........and waited.......and waited......Did I mention we waited. So we called yet again at about 7:50ish. They said between 1.5 - 2 more hours. Then my brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew went to get us some food. Then around 8:15 the doctor came out (FINALLY!!!!!). He told us that my dad was fine and he was going to be ok. The reason that it took so long was that his blood vessels that they were going to put together were too thin and brittle and that they could not do the surgery as planned but they (being the best surgens in the US) had a plan B. So plan B actually worked and he was being closed up. They had to warm his body temp up, because they had to drop it drastically to do the surgery, and then they would wake him up, do some neurological tests, and send him to ICU they will take about 30 min to get him situated and then we could go see him. Now the ICU at stanford only allows 2 people in at a time and only visiting for 30 min. So we finally were able to see him at about 10:30pm. Today (day after surgery) he was able to eat lunch and dinner, moved to a room not in ICU (less restrictions), then walked around the wing. I have some pics and things all the way through the proccedure and I will get them online ASAP. Hope all is well with you all and I pray that no one has to deal with this again. If you have a questions please ask. I would be happy to answer them. Also keep praying for him because he is not yet out of the woods. | 
