Mel came home yesterday and is feeling fine.  Contrary to my expectation that the hospital would serve her something healthy (and moderately yucky) for breakfast like oatmeal, they instead larded her down with bacon, eggs, a large cinnamon roll, milk, coffee, OJ, and fruit loops.  Her mom ate the roll and I ate the fruit loops.  How’s that for “hospital” food?

The day before, while waiting for her to recover, Mel’s mom and I went down to the cafeteria for lunch and were amazed at how good and cheap the food was.  There are many fancy restaurants in that area but from now on, I will be temped to duck into the Saint Francis hospital cafeteria rather than PeiWei Asian Diner or anything else.  I probably won’t but I’ll think about it.  I got a pretty decent book at the Gift Shop too.  It’s called “How to Get Into the Bible”.  I’m not usually interested in such things but the synopsis of the first book of Judges (or maybe it was Samuel) included the phrase “a woman is gang-raped to death in front of the temple”.  Funny, I don’t remember that one from Sunday school at First Methodist in Camden, Arkansas.   Perhaps this book will sumarize things in English for me instead of “church talk”.

During all this, Mel was doing at least 10 times better than expected.  She has yet to report any serious discomfort and so was allowed to go home with the admonition not to drive or lift anything.  She had been in the bed with some booties around her legs that inflated with air every thirty seconds or so to massage away any potential blood clots and so was more than ready to get out of bed.  I can imagine that a little air compressor going off like that all the time made for a long night.  Her mom has always been the sort of person who loves to sit with the infirm in hospitals and so I was sent packing to sleep at home and to make sure the kids were going to bed, getting up on time, and all those other real-life things that kids will slough off when not goaded.

The staff of Saint Francis were more than nice but that hospital has been in the Tulsa area for many decades and has been renovated and added onto many times and is now a hopelessly confusing warren-like maze of passageways guaranteed to make you lose your way on the way to your car.  Just finding my way from the surgery waiting area to the Starbucks (and thank goodness there was a Starbucks – the official coffee from the Bunn-O-Matic was horrendous) was a challenge.  Not to mention finding the men’s room.  Getting around had a certain exploratory appeal to it but not when I was hunting a bathroom or my car.  We had a brief visit from one of our pastors but he was one of those guys with the uber-caring, soft-spoken demeanor that annoyed me so I was glad to see him go.  I appreciated the thought immensely and Mel seemed to appreciate his visit but he set my teeth on edge.

She’s home now and feeling good so I hope this little episode with the cancer and the surgeries is over and we can get on with living.