Day Two: The Surgery Went Very Smooth

Lois came out of 7.5 hours of surgery yesterday about 3 o'clock. The doctor said everything went very smooth and that there were no surprises. Prior to surgery the surgical nurse told me that Dr. Cooper spends the majority of his time looking through a microscope stitching tissue together, "he's very meticulous. Probably the most meticulous of our surgeons." I told her that was something I liked!

My mother, sister, and I joined Lois about two hours later when they wheeled her into her room. I was surprised how good she looked after being "under the knife" so long! She said when she had awoke, about 3:30, she was in tremendous pain; she said she even thought she might not "make it." While talking she held the pain med button closely in her hand and punched the button, giving herself anther shot of pain medication (morphine) three or four times during the next hour; but during the next hour she pushed it only once.


While there, I answered the cell phone when our son, Derik, called. I handed her the phone and she talked to him a few moments, then they hung up. A few minutes later it rang again and it turned out to be a friend of ours who didn't know Lois was in the hospital and called to tell her that she(the frieind) had had a mastectomy a few days ago. While they talked, the conversation soon turned to Wal-Mart, Costco, Shopko and other places Lois is so very familiar with. I thought, here she is all stitched up, wrapped up, legs in those so comfortable plastic wrap things that squeeze'em every few minutes, tubes and needles stuck everywhere, plastic bulbs slowly filling red, and she's sharing information, with someone on the phone, about the prices of things. Lois is a hard woman to put down; and that's a good thing.

We left her to rest and went to get something to eat. Afterwards I went up to tell her good night.