Post-Op

I'm typing this from my childhood room, a room I last slept in more than 14 years ago. The carpet and walls are exactly the same. It was made into a sewing room, then Dad's TV room, and now it's the filing and PC room. I won' be sleeping in this room. I'm in Dad's old room, in my old bed. It's very small now. I feel 12 feet tall in it. There's a lamp on the wall that might be older than me. It has a brass pepper mill, and I wonder who thought that was a good decorative item for a four-year-old boy.

Mom is slowly falling into a drug coma after her 9:30 Darvocet pill. We arrived at the hospital at 10 a.m. as instructed for the pre-op preparation. She was supposed to be wheeled into surgery at 1 p.m. They didn't fetch her until 3. We sat in that tiny room for four hours with Mom hooked to an inactive IV drip. The nurse-anesthetist, the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, and the attending all came in to cover her drug allergies (briefly: all of them). The surgery started at 3:30, and she was done in an hour. About 90 minutes later, she was awake and snacking, now devoid of her gall bladder and sporting four tiny belly holes. They found one gall stone and sent it away for testing. About half an hour later, we drove to the local store to get her prescription. She says she already has relief from the bladder pain, but she'll feel the surgery tomorrow.

I read an entire Sunday NY Times while waiting today. The staff were helpful, but that was some wait time.

I hope to be back home Friday.

We visited with some of Your Sister's school pals this weekend: a high-school friend and her husband and baby Saturday, and a college pal and her husband and kids Sunday. It was a fine time. Lamb schwarma one night and s'mores the other. We cooked out Monday and ate many veggies from the garden. The corn was mostly a loss. It was puny and rotten. These weren't the stalks that got the baby oil; they're still growing.

I have a pile of books with me to read the next few days, and I might try to run one morning if I can avoid the school traffic of blasting sun heat. I stockpiled drawings for Sketchtember.

Oh, and this is the 800th Letter to Holly.

Picture of the Day
Just a matter of practice.