The gory details

Actually there is nothing too gory to report.

Contrary to last surgery when he was wheeled into the room connected to eight tubes, and hallucinating that I’d brought a black lab into the hospital, last night was a breeze.

He returned to the room completely disconnected, and when when he asked what kind of pain relief they’d be using they told him Tylenol.

The WTF look on his his face is the picture I wish we had - the picture you deserve if you’ve been following us this far - but sadly, I was too slow on the draw. They told him there would also be Tramadol, but only every six hours.  This is a far cry from the morphine pump he loved in 2016, but the good news is that he’s not really in much pain at all unless he needs to move.

Right now he’s on complete bed rest with his legs immobilized. They did have to take a chunk of of his quad to get a clean margin on one side, and he’ll need to wear a brace from hip to ankle for who knows how long. Today he has two more radiation treatments and he’ll get another before they take him back into surgery to sew him up.

Gory detail 1: When you have open tubes sticking out of your body and something called a “wound vac”attached to your leg, not all of the blood stays in your body.

Gory detail 2: Negative marigins just means nothing they can see with a microscope. Radiation is trying to wipe out anything left over. Like they took the Oreo out of the milk, but they’re hoping the floating crumbs are gone too. Truthfully, we won’t know. We’ll never know if they did get all of the crumbs, but we’ll eventually find out if they didn’t.

Gory detail 3: The nurse told us that babies cannot be born in the St. Mary’s part of the hospital because there might be an unwed mother or something like that, and it’s just an old-school rule that’s still in place. They also cannot pick up birth control from the pharmacy at St. Mary’s even though it is all part of Mayo. They have to go to the Methodist side of the hospital to have their babies and pick up contraceptives. I’m hoping Rico’s not pregnant because that will seriously complicate our situation.

Rico says, “Thanks for all of the support from our amazing circle. I’m thinking of you guys all of the time, and you’re helping me pull through this.”

He’s right.

Last night our kids ate dinner that was prepared by friends, were driven around for hours by Jason who flew out from San Francisco, Rico was covered in his favorite blanket made by my good friend Sara (he won’t go anywhere without it), I had lunch with a kind neighbor who sat through the consultation with me, ate midnight snacks delivered by another kind neighbor, and total strangers gave him another shot at life.  We are covered in kindness and so, so grateful.