Surgery

Tuesday I went to the hospital to have my arm bones put back together. I would never have thought it would be fun to have surgery, but it was. The Lord was with me all the way.

Sometime after my husband and I arrived at 11:45am, after paperwork and bloodwork, I was brought back to a bed and given a gown to put on, whose ties I couldn't tie one-handed... I waited a long time there and then my friend Verna showed up. Since she is also a nurse who works in that very hospital, it was like having my own personal guide to surgery. She could explain what all was going on, go check the schedules to see when I was slated and she even went and got Stu from the waiting room so we could all visit together.

The other nurses were fun, too and no one much liked my falling off the walking path story, so we worked on coming up with a new one. Something along the lines of swimming off the coast of San Diego and encountering a shark... Verna was even able to come into the pre-op waiting area (and she told me my anesthesiologist was excellent, which is always nice to know.) After that the anesthesiologist put a mask over my face and I woke up to pain in my arm and then painkillers. The rest of the evening was spent in loopy land where I was more or less asleep. But still, for the most part, it was a fun day.

There was another thing, too, a funny, little thing the Lord did between Him and me. The day before I'd been working with my pencils and markers and thinking how it would be nice if I could get a second box to divide them up, markers in one box, pencils in the other. Just a passing thought. Then at the hospital, I realized I'd forgotten my glasses case and the nurse said they had a case, one I could keep, in fact -- it was a pencil and marker box with a wash cloth in it! I just laughed and no one there knew what had just happened but me and the Lord.

Tomorrow (or the day after, or... whenever I manage to get it typed...), the recovery...

Karen