Pre-surgery soup

I was feeling pretty fancy, with my new blog and all, until I couldn't figure out how to create additional posts. Which would make it both very uninteresting and not a blog. But now I am writing Post #2, so we're cranking on all cylinders.

Went for a slow walk today and did very well. I don't think I'll be feeling too wonderful after surgery tomorrow, so it was good to go out while I could. I saw some folks on segways and just had to look away; made my stomach too upset to relive my ride from last week.

On a much lighter...and unrelated...note, I was in multiple rooms in the hospital. One day, my brother asked me if I needed anything and I said earplugs to drown out my roommate. Among other tirades, I listened to no less than an hour on how she had ordered rye bread for her sandwich and how come she couldn't get wheat bread and why couldn't they get it right and...

Don't get me wrong...hospitals are not the most wonderful of facilities. But I was so tempted to chime in, "Look lady, I would be thrilled to eat ANY kind of bread." Then someone came to transfer me to the neurosurgery ward (I was out of ICU and on the cardiac ward, since that was the only bed available) and she chimed in, "How come she gets to move floors? I've been here longer. It's not fair!"

But I digress. Tomorrow I will undergo about 4 hours of surgery. First the physician will do his magic to reset my jaw. Then he will work on the fractures in my nose. Then back to the jaw and wire it shut. I imagine I will feel pretty lousy for some number of days and then things will start to improve.

There are other facial, neck, and rib fractures and I'm not sure which of these will be addressed when and how. The surgeries tomorrow are necessary to ensure that the bones don't set incorrectly and then have to be rebroken. My face currently looks like it's skewed right...my jaw and teeth and nose are out of alignment and swollen and discolored. Actually, my entire face looks like this ("I feel pretty...Oh so pretty...") but the lower half is the worst.

I have discovered that you can use only a mini-coffee maker to cook canned soup and make jello. I will start to work on the cookbook and book tour in the near future.

In the best of all worlds, we'll go home later in the week. I doubt that will be the case. More likely is we'll look for more of a "residence" type of locale and go from there.

This experience has really shown me in spades how blessed I am to have such supportive family and friends. And this has even brought out the best in strangers. It's a nice change from the negativity that I can sometimes become enveloped in.

I will try to update this Monday or, at worst, Tuesday.

--Karen--