Sylvia's Journal

My surgery was swift and efficiently handled at a brand-new day surgery complex in Danvers. About 6 professionals attended to me during the various phases of the process, most wearing colorful cloth caps rather than the usual light blue disposable ones. My surgeon had one made of African cloth, the anesthesiologist a calico one that matched her outfit (not blue). I am sure all these changes came from focus group research and a serious intent to serve the customer well. I felt very well served.

I was wheeled into the OT already drowsy from the drug they were slowly dripping into me, and welcomed by blue grass music which the people who were operating on me discussed during the procedure, a conversation I followed and wanted to take part in but my mouth would not let me. I could not see the handiwork because of a drape that shielded me from my operators. I thought they were still arranging my hand in the right position when the drape was pulled away with the words “we’re done!” It felt like only seconds had passed. I was wheeled into the recovery room, given a choice of muffins or raisin toast and a coffee which I savored in small bites and slow sips while waiting for Axel to come and get me. And that was it, 8:30 in 10:30 out. On the way home I picked up some videos expecting to be lying low the rest of the day, a light and unknown Robin Williams (Licensed to Wed) and Persepolis.

And with that I became a temporary lefty, an very underdeveloped lefty at that. Witness my (left) handwritten and unintelligible source reference for a quote (“Medicine involves “thought-in-action,” unlike, say, economics. Economists work by first assembling large body of data, then analyzing it meticulously, and only then […]”). It should read ‘How doctors think by Jerome Groopman, M.D. It is good I still have the book around because I could not decipher my scribbles this morning.

When I woke up this morning my hand no longer felt like the prosthetic with rubber fingers that it did all of yesterday. This short unpleasant experience gave me a little better understanding of what Axel suffered for more than 6 months while the nerves on his left arm and hand were incapacitated. It is a strange sensation when you look at an extremity that is yours but cannot will it to do what you want. With the muscles and tendons that control the extensors of my fingers temporarily paralyzed my hand looked like a claw; I could not straighten them fingers.

I did some work on my computer and then facebooked a little so see how all my friends, scattered around the world, are doing. I found Nicole home-sick for colorful Vermont in faraway Nepal, chatted with student Brianna in Haiti and explained to Suzy in Virginia what action the Sarah Palin action doll actually engages in (shooting from the hip with her tiny holstered plastic revolver). I ordered the doll on request from my sister from a website that offers to create an action doll of anyone you wish.
I could also have gotten Obama, McCain, Elliott Spitzer, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a host of others, including Pez dispensers with Obama or McCain heads (for a steep price, but hey, it may be an investment that the great-grandchildren can sell on E-bay light years from now for a good profit).

Tessa came home from another long workday and train commute in and out of Boston and found this rather unusual vegetable that we had displayed on the kitchen counter. Her eyes nearly popped out (as they do in cartoons) because at first she thought this was how big the foot long beans (kouseband bonen in Dutch) that I planted can actually grow. I had several times lectured everyone in the household that they weren’t picking the beans and that they were missing out on this delicacy. She thought for a moment that the vegetable in front of her was a bean left too long on the vine. It’s actually a Sicilian squash gifted to us by Ted’s brother Gerry. It would take them weeks to eat it. We’ll get going on it tonight.

And while we are looking at squash, Sita is scribing Warren Buffett and the most powerful women in the world in Southern California.