After RA was prepped (changed, IV, etc.) I was able to go back and sit with her in the pre-op waiting area. Eventually it was time for her to go to nuclear medicine for the radioactive tracer injection (used to find lymph nodes for the sentinel node biopsy). I was told there was no place to wait* with her at nuclear medicine, so I did not go with her. She was gone a long time, so I waited outside in the day surgery registration waiting room. I saw her come back from nuclear medicine and went back with her to wait for the surgery.
We had good visits with the anesthesiologist and the surgeon while waiting. The surgeon had a medical student with him, and the pre-op discussions indicated he had suspected the lump was not normal due to its "feel".
RA was taken back for surgery around 1135. I went to the waiting room, pulled out my laptop, got online and worked for 2 hours while watching her progress on the status monitor. When her status changed to 'closing' I started shutting down and putting away my laptop. Overall, she was in surgery for about 2.5 hours. The surgeon came out and chatted with me while she was on her way up to recovery. He said everything went fine. He took all the skin he could, and the base tissue looked good (intact, not impacted by the lumpectomy, with no visible signs of a tumor).
I watched the status monitor to see when I could go up and join RA in recovery. Eventually I was paged, with a request to go to the day surgery registration desk. I went up, and was told RA was OK, but it would be about 30 minutes before I could go back. I just looked at the recovery nurse and said "No, not acceptable". I said she needed me there, this was NOT run-of-the-mill breast cancer, and I would be quiet and stay out of the way. She let me in.
We had arranged with the pre-op nurse for me to go back ASAP after she came back from surgery, but that deal was obviously not honored. At some point I must do a post dedicated to how the medical system is setup to handle "average" patients/spouses, not those of us who are a bit more proactive and knowledgeable. I suspect they imagined they were doing me a favor by hiding the harmless, but potentially "scary" post-anesthesia side effects like the shivers.
RA was barely awake, but was responding to questions about pain as they tried to balance IV pain medication and her recovery from general anesthesia. Her vital signs were very good. The O2 sensor was flaky, which meant the monitor kept beeping. Poor design, and from my view unacceptable if the patient really needed to be monitored (the nurse mostly ignored the monitor due to the O2 sensor). I stuck my hand through the slot in the bed railing and gently stroked her left arm. It seemed to help some. Eventually she was moved to a hospital room.
* Which I found out later was incorrect, and she did have a long wait for the injection. Oh, well. Sometimes I believe what I'm told without pushing back....by now I should know better.
