August 17, 2011
Excision Surgery
Yawn! Good morning! Today's the day we've been awaiting for four weeks: Michelle's tumor excision surgery. I had a rough night of sleep. I'd put on a boring podcast with a half hour sleep timer. I'd hear about 10 minutes of it and fall asleep, but then wake up soon after it stopped. Lather, rinse, repeat several times. Oh well, I'll sleep better tonight.
Once again back at SNHMC, doing the hurry up and wait. They're prep'ing Michelle. Surgery should be in about an hour or so. I'll see her again after she's changed into her surgery gown.
Had a quick breakfast at the hospital cafeteria. Head over to the chapel to finish up my Rosary novena with the Glorious Mysteries, praying that the Blessed Mother would intercede for this mother. It looks bright and sunny outside. I'm sure the kids wish I'd return home soon so that I can take 'em to the pool.
Snark: Comparing Smart Phone addiction to cigarettes. Even as a developer of leading edge smart phone chips, I got a chuckle out of this article. Probably because of the grains of truth therein.
Been catching up on my Read It Later list, and learning a lot. Among them, Perl v5.10 finally has "given/when" which are like C's "switch/case" statements on steroids.
When my phone ran low on juice, I switched to reading the Readers Digest in the waiting room. I saw this tidbit about the best hot dogs in the USA. See snapshot at right.. Oo-rah! Go Gene 'n Judes! Only a mile from where I grew up!
On my way back home. Michelle looked pretty wiped out from the 5 hours of surgery. It was originally estimated to take 1½ to 2 hours but the scar tissue from the earlier mastectomy made for slow work. And her surgeon has a reputation for being a meticulous surgeon. He tells me he has the area "cleaned out". No tumor, no adjacent lymph nodes, but sparing all the muscle, nerves, and vessels in that area. She'll be staying overnight at the hospital. I wonder how much she'll have bounced back by tomorrow because I can't imagine bringing her home today.
I stopped by A&E Roastery to pick Claire up an iced "bowtie latte" as a thank-you for her keeping an eye on the boys all these hours. I took Claire and the boys swimming at the Milford pool to get them out of the house for a while. I felt bad that I got back home from the hospital so many hours later than I'd hoped.
When we returned from the pool, Claire went to her piano lesson. About the same time Abby returned from her sleepover. Around 6 o'clock friends from our parish brought over a dinner and soon thereafter Claire rejoined us. After we cleaned up, Claire and Abby went out to Youth Group. The boys and I watched the pilot of iCarly and I did some catching up on the phone. I tucked the boys in with their prayers. With as little sleep as I got last night and the early rise time today, I'm not long for this day. Good night all!
Snapshots I took today:
