The Morning after

Yes, yes, yes!!!

Oh, you can't imagine how relieved I am!! Not because I was so worried really, but more to have it over with.

I had the best surgery team you can imagine. OR is a surprisingly busy and bustelig place, I don't know why I was expeting it to be more somber, more quiet, more serious... but what I saw was a lot of people all dressed in green and light blue, all in motion and in between prepping patients for surgery they talk about American Idol and who they are rooting for, movies they saw, and how their mother was doing yesterday... regular life and regular people. Somehow that was oddly reassuring.

The Docs, who come to the patients floors in their white sterile coats, show up down here with more of their human individuality. I have never seen so many different head coverings. The standard pale blue, see through hair bonnet has been replaced by personality statements: a pouffy black velvet bonnet printed up with guitars in rainbow colors, on a stocky older female surgeon, Dr Maccalrath wore a black tight bandanna with yellow smiley faces on in, an older doc in his sixties sported a cap in a sparkling tiny green, silver and black pattern, a younger black sugeon in a louminous white headscarf and my anesthesiologist, a cheerful woman with the most beautiful light blue eyes, had pink and laverder bows printed on hers... the list goes on. Dr Morrissey was one of the very few whose head was bare. He came in smiling and ready to go, patted me on the knee, assured me they would leave every part in that was healthy and told me everything will be fine.

My surgery nurse assistant was a beautiful young woman from China, and my head nurse an older woman with a wide round face that shone with pure friendliness. They all came up one by one and introduced themselves, asked me all the same questions what we would be taking out and what we would be leaving in, all smiled at me big loving smiles and I felt lucky. In between I remembered the soft loving blanket you were all holding me in, I tell you I could feel that, and it instantly then and still now brings tears tremendous of gratitude to my eyes.

I remember arriving in the OR room, remember breathing in very cold air, remembering how good it felt to have the heated blanckets covering me up, remember heaving myself over onto the operation table, seeing the gigantic round light apparatuses above me on the ceiling, Dr Morrissey lifting my arms onto adjacent tables to both sides and covering them with more warm blankets, thinking how comfortable that felt... and then... I was gone.

A few seconds and an eternity later, I looked up at another nurse: Debbie, who asked me how I was feeling. How was I feeling? Why is she asking me this? Wasn't there something important I had been right in the middle of doing? Didn't I need to go somewhere? And what is that sensation in my belly? Oh, that hurts a little! Oh, my God! ... that must be the cut!... It's already all over???


Right now I am SITTING in a chair next to my bed!!! I have managed to sit up, and turn my body to get my legs over the edge, made it out of bed and walked to the bathroom and today indeed I have been washed by my Tech nurse, and today for the fisrt time that is not LIz, but Ashley, a very young and lovely woman.

Now my battery is about to run out, so I better send this off.

Thank you each and everyone of you for what you have brought to me, your love, your thoughts, your prayers and your words... all of it is so unspeakably beautiful to me!!!
Tomma