Back to Life

I am officially marking today as the back-to-normal day.....the day when all of our sickness has gone and Big Daddy has healed enough to go back to work. The day when I can no longer hurl excuses at my mounting pile of laundry. The day when I must drop off the dry cleaning and buy toilet paper, lest a riot occur at my house.

You may be wondering about Big Daddy's neck surgery. He had a herniated disk between C7 and C8 vertebrae. He tried physical therapy to relieve the hot-searing-knife-in-the-shoulder-pain that made him sleepless, frustrated and all around crabby. Big Daddy could never get comfortable or find any position that relieved the pain. He was craned over to one side and started taking on a serious Quasimodo silhouette. After much discussion and research, we decided to follow the advice of the doctor and Big Daddy had fusion surgery.

The doctor in Big Fat Medical Center, Big City, Big State made a small incision in the front of his neck. He screwed a small plate on to the upper and lower vertebrae, then dug out the disk and replaced it with synthetic bone. He stitched it up on the inside, then put steri strips on the skin and put a big band aid on top of it. Big Daddy stayed in the surgery center, which is code for private hospital, overnight. You should have seen this place. It was a four-bed hospital. It was like staying at the W Hotel where they switched out the king-sized bed for a hospital bed. I don't know how we ended up in such surgical luxury, but I can promise you that we are now spoiled and a sterile ammonia-smelling hospital room will be hard to tolerate.

Not that we are looking to spend time in the hospital - I'm just sayin' that when you've had big windows, carpeted floors, and a private bath with nice linens adjoining a hall where it is so quiet you could hear a pin drop, you think back to all the semi-private rooms and cold tile with a little less love.

There was one funny moment after the anesthesiologist gave Big Daddy the "happy drug". It did not make Big Daddy happy. He was suddenly angry and started yelling at me to "Do something value-added today. Do NOT sit around here waiting for me. Do something of value today." I think they shot him up with accountant truth serum. The nurses were shocked. One of them asked me if that meant I could go shopping. Another started directing me to the nearest Denny's and Starbucks. "Get yah-self a big breakfast and read the pah-per, honey", she told me. "We'll take good cah-re of him."

Of course, Big Daddy doesn't remember saying any of that.

I did go to Starbucks.

Maybe I'll stop by Starbucks again today when I drop off the dry cleaning. I think that's adding value, don't you?