This has been a hectic week for me, and I’ve been out of the loop re: both national news and the CO site and community. You know it’s bad when the great and powerful CO himself texted me to say that some COers have asked if I’m okay, and he suggested that I provide a “proof of life” post for my “adoring fans.”
Did I need to quote that “adoring fans” part?
Probably not. But I like the sound of it, so sue me.
Anyway, I’m still here, and thanks for your concern.
I last posted in the early hours of last Friday, after I’d inadvertently left my wife to face the hurricane alone in Florida, while I went up to Tennessee to stay with my mom, while sis and her husband took a short trip to listen to some gospel singing in east Tennessee.
Of course the storm had been stronger than we’d expected, knocking the power off at my house, and actually causing some flooding that devastated the Carolinas and east Tennessee, causing my sister and her husband to come home a day earlier than planned. (By the way, our power came back on after around 30 hours, and our house and rentals and tenants were all unharmed.)
But it turned out that early on Friday, the storm became much less important to us, because that morning, my daughter Katie’s husband rushed her to the ER in Denver, where she had surgery later that day.
Regular readers will remember that Katie is the best pediatric nurse in the mountain west (references available on request), and that she is an apple of her dad’s eye. I’m not sure how much I’ve written about this before, but she was born with Hirschsprung’s syndrome, a condition involving under-developed nerve endings in the colon, in utero. She had a colostomy and half of her colon removed when she was three days old, and then another major surgery when she was three months old.
Thankfully, she takes after her old man, in that she is as tough as a $2 steak. She fully recovered, and after some daunting infections and hospitalizations during her first five years of life, she has been blessedly healthy since then.
Until Friday, when it was discovered that she had many adhesions throughout her intestine, unwelcome leftovers from her long-ago surgeries and internal scarring.
Before Friday, if you’d asked me, “What is the longest and most painful four and a half hours anyone can experience?” I would have said, “Listening to Que Mala Harris trying to answer a straightforward question.”
But now I know that I was wrong. Because my Katie was in surgery for four and a half hours, during which my wife prayed and worried in a dark house in Florida, and I did the same in rainy Tennessee. While we were waiting, we contemplated how we were going to get flights to Denver from two different towns in the aftermath of a storm that had caused havoc at the local airports.
Then the news arrived: her docs were fantastic, and she’d come through the surgery like a champ. They’d initially tried to do the operation laparoscopically, but when they got inside and saw the extent of the scarring, they realized they’d need to open her up more comprehensively. She’s got an impressive scar, but thank God the docs didn’t need to take out any more of her bowel.
Before the surgery she had been hesitant about my wife making the trip out until she saw how the surgery went, but afterwards, she wanted her mom there. (Mom was chomping at the bit, and I’m not sure it would have made a difference. Apparently there is a Norwegian-American rule to the effect that once you’ve given birth to someone, you have the inalienable right to go see them whenever they’re sick, and regardless of their feelings on the issue. Or so she explained.)
So it was decided that I’d keep the home fires burning, while Karen flew to Denver on Saturday. Katie will be in the hospital for another three or four days at least, with her husband and mom nearby.
As always happens after a very bad scare, the world seems a little more vibrant now. Colors are brighter, food tastes better, and politics seem like insignificant annoyances. Our prayers have been answered, and our worst fears averted, and life is good!
Tonight, for the first time in nearly a week, I started paying attention again, and watched the VP debate. I’ll have more to say on Friday, but when our opponent confesses on tv that he’s a knucklehead, and our guy does so well that the partisan moderators have to turn his mic off, you know things went well for the good guys.
Speaking of which, if I were in the Iranian government, I wouldn’t be answering any phone calls, pages, texts, or radio messages anytime soon.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 