DONIS CASEY: Write Errant

I had a marvelous time at Velma Teague Library in Glendale, AZ, yesterday. Lesa Holstein, Library manager and contributing book reviewer for Library Journal, Mystery News, and various web review sites, has written an amazing summary of the visit, which I am directing all you readers to go look at forthwith (April 23). Once you read what I had to say, you won’t be able to resist reading the rest of her reviews and interviews of other authors, many very much more famous than I. You’ll end up with a “To Be Read” pile six feet high. Lesa’s blog address is http://www.lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com

And now to go from yesterday, when I had a lot of fun, to today, when I didn’t. For those of you who are following my husband’s health adventures, here is the latest news:

We saw Don’s urologist this morning to discuss the results of the last lithotripsy, which was three weeks ago. The stone is still there, so lithotripsy has not done the trick. The doctor thinks it’s time for surgery to get the stones out of there. We have to get surgical permissions from Don’s primary care physician, and from the cardiologist, before they can schedule the operation.

The doc wants to do a robotic procedure, a type of laparoscopic surgery, which involves very small incisions and very much shorter recovery time than traditional surgery. He warned us, though, that whether he could do it or not depends on the state of scar tissue in Don’s abdomen from the bowel resection he had forty-five years ago. If the robotic incisions don’t work, the doc plans to do regular surgery right then and there. The doctor’s assistant who explained things to us afterwards said that recovery time for regular surgery is “outrageous! Four to six weeks!” We just looked at each other. After all that he’s been through over the year, four to six weeks is nothing.

The doc also mentioned a couple of other possible complications that might occur because of peculiarities in Don’s inner anatomy, but that’s of the worst-case scenario, cover-the-doctor’s-ass variety, so I won’t reiterate. How do we feel about this? Kind of blank, really. Don said he’s not worried about the surgery. He just wants all of this over with. The operation is estimated to take four to six hours. Depending on what the doc has to do, Don will be in the hospital between three days and a week. I expect it’ll take a month or so to get everything arranged for the surgery. In the meantime, Don will be going in for another outpatient procedure to have his nephrostomy tubes replaced yet again, probably next week. Tomorrow, we’ll be on the phone talking to doctors, trying to arrange surgery clearances. But for the rest of this afternoon, we’ve agreed to just stare at the wall in silence and not think about it for a while.