Found

OK, I'll admit that I was a little frazzled in my last journal entry when the hospital couldn't seem to locate Blaine .... he's a grown man in a revealing hospital gown, just how far could he have gone??? He told me surgery was first thing this morning and when he wasn't back in his room six or seven hours later, I started getting a little antsy. But let's examine the real reason why. In my paranoid, delusional world, the following scenario was playing out with startling clarity:

"Blaine goes in for surgery to remove a suspicious mass in his post-operative wound site. Come to find out, the reason I couldn't get hold of him in the hospital today is the surgery took longer than anticipated because it's not just a cyst, its an aggressive form of flesh-eating disease and in order to save his life, doctors have to amputate his leg at the knee. So he comes home and a few weeks later he's walking around on his new prosthetic leg. We go to dinner at Ryan's buffet, where his fake foot slips on some green beans on the floor and he falls on a salad fork, putting out both of his eyes, rendering him blind. So a few weeks after that he and I are shopping at Staples, him with his prosthetic leg and patches over both eyes, when he accidentally knocks his white-tipped cane into a display of office furniture, causing an extremely large and heavy bookcase to fall over and crush his internal organs, requiring a kidney transplant. A few weeks after the transplant he suffers an allergic reaction to the anti-rejection drugs, which causes his lung capacity to decrease to only 25%, which requires that we carry an oxygen tank with us at all times."

So this afternoon, when I couldn't track him down anywhere .... all I could think was, "I am too damn young to be married to a man with this many problems."

What *actually* happened was that his surgery wasn't until late morning, and there appears to have been a miscommunication with the nurse that Blaine asked to have call me after the surgery. The miscommunication being ... she didn't do it.

So although I didn't get to talk to anyone "official" from the hospital until 8:30 this evening, I did learn that things are ok. (I talked to Blaine earlier than that, but he was wonked out on so many pain meds that he doesn't count.)

He had a very large hematoma (fancy name for icky, gooey, gelatinous glob of blood) that had formed in the area where his lower leg bone used to be. Although they don't suspect anything will develop, they did call in an infectious disease specialist to do cultures on the mass to make sure it's not harboring any form of freaky bacteria or anything. We should have the culture results in a day or two. In the meantime he has a drain tube in his leg and is resting comfortably. Not sure when he will be cleared to come home, probably Monday or Tuesday.

I want to take a quick minute to thank all of you who are checking in and leaving notes of encouragement in the guestbook. I especially got a good laugh out of the comment about "now we know why our moms were always telling us to wear clean underwear every place we went" HA! :)

Thanks also to my local friends who have offered to help in various ways. You know who you are, you know *I* know who you are, and you know that I appreciate it.

PS. For those of you who somehow got the misguided impression that this website was dedicated to my daughter and her fight against leukemia, and not for the bizarr-o trials and tribulations of my husband .... let me just tell you that she is doing fine. Better than her old man, that's for sure!

Kristie