All’s Well That Ends with Surgery

After I had Jamie, I got a hemorrhoid.  First one in my life, and hopefully the last.  Thank the good Lord, it vanished quickly, and was clearly a consequence of pushing Jamie’s giant head out of my you-know-where.  But some people, like my dear husband, are prone to hemorrhoids and there’s just nothing they can do to avoid them… and as in Tony’s case, nothing they can do, short of surgery, to correct them.

 

We’ve had a rough week.  I’ve been sick and Tony has been suffering.  Several doctor’s visits over the course of the week concluded with a hemorrhoidectomy Friday evening.  Tony was under general anesthesia for nearly two hours and the surgeon had to remove part of a vein.  How scary and awful does that sound?  He’s still recovering, of course, but I can tell you that the pain I see writ across his face is much different than the pain he wore last week.  It’s healing pain, now.

 

He told me I didn’t have to wait at the hospital for him, which is good, because you know what three things don’t mix?  My two children and a hospital waiting room.  I took them to McDonald’s to burn energy and because I really didn’t feel like cooking.  Charles took his socks off in the PlayPlace and got a sliver in his foot (learning his lesson about socks and their protective properties, I hope) and Jamie rolled in fry dust and McNugget dipping sauce until he was head-to-toe filthy.  This is how I keep my children healthy: make them bathe in the sea of germs that is a fast food play area. 

 

I got a call from the nurse at 6:40 pm that I needed to come to the hospital right away so I could pick up Tony’s prescription for pain medication before the pharmacy closed.  There was probably no way I could have made it in time, but I tried.  I shouted at the boys, who were in the top of the hamster maze, to come down and get dressed, we have to go pick up daddy at the hospital, he’s out of surgery!  Nothing like yelling that in a crowded restaurant to earn you some strange looks.  The boys dawdled, we got to the pharmacy too late, and then we proceeded to wreak havoc upon the hospital waiting room.  When Tony was finally moved to recovery, the boys raced back through the halls of the day-surgery floor, careening into garbage cans and wheelchairs.  Fortunately, at 7:15 pm, there weren’t a whole lot of people there.  When it became clear that Tony was not going to jump out of the hospital bed and get dressed to go home, I called my brother to pick up the kids.  I couldn’t risk them destroying expensive I.V. equipment or something, and things were definitely headed down that path.

 

We spent a pretty easy weekend.  Friends of mine absconded with Charles and Jamie for most of the day Saturday to give us a break, so we slept a lot.  Yesterday, I felt recovered enough to run the Jingle Bell 5k through Mount Vernon and then we watched the Christmas parade and had dinner.  Now, if we could all get well and stay well, the holiday season might feel a bit more like a holiday.  And Tony, well, this was his second surgery since we’ve been married.  I’d sure like it to be the last.