WELCOME BACK, ELISSA!!!!

[Guest guest]

Hi, Elissa,

I am pressed for time and am therefore cc'ing the Feisty group as well -- I

know they have been on tenterhooks, and I am confident will approve

my letter for posting as he has done before during these uncertain times of

erratic connections and downloads that never do.

(I got a call from my phone company yesterday and got sold by a sales pitch

for DSL. I hope it is better than this. It is cheaper, they claim, since I

am already a customer..)

Thank God, hurray, hallelujah, baruch Hashem, and please be very well very

fast, Ms. Heroic Veteran of Scary Scrubsuit-Dwelling Microorganisms and

Generalized Orthopedic Mayhem.

Elissa, I am SO INCREDIBLY RELIEVED. Despite being definitely bummed out to

hear of your travails with actual or hypothetical infection, leading to your

current at-home PIC line and antibiotic regimen under the watchful eye of

Hubby.

No doubt you are not up to saying much about the surgery itself. Of course I

will be hanging on every detail and punctuation mark at such time as you are

up to telling the tale. I cannot figure out whether you would or would not

like a call, so maybe I will hold back a bit, or maybe I will be brave and

venture to try you tonite . . . .duh, must ponder this some more, have to

shower and get to an appointment post haste, and cannot believe my stupid

cable

modem or the server or resident laptop elf did not relay this email to me

till now!

Elissa, I am so ecstatic and reprieved-feeling to know that you are alive,

albeit probably fairly miserable out there in San . Well, as I

reminded someone the other day, this infernal surgery does have a high rate

of complications, but most of them are thankfully in the " minor " category.

" Minor " meaning that any paralysis will be more or less short-lived, and the

pain will not exceed 8.9 on the Richter scale and will likewise be gone by

next year. Or that, as in my case, even if the additive effect of, say,

stress, analgesics , and today's version of good old I.V. curare you

hallucinate two extra arms and brag about your shiny new extremities to

anyone who drops by to see you in the Recovery Room, they will most likely

give you enough strong psychoactive medication to obliterate all memory of

the experience even while joking about it uproariously in the hospital

elevator. (Just kidding. Well, to some extent, at least -- the rest is all

true. But I have been wholly fictionalized, and the other characters and

facilities are a composite of my third-grade teacher and two or more Jungian

archetypes I heard about on NPR.).

Don't worry about the kids. In the long run, this will deepen their

compassion and empathy and will drive them to spend their lives doing good

works

for others, helping the sick, defending those oppressed by irritable RNs or

sleep-deprived lab techs, and directing residency programs in internal

medicine. Who knows, one or the other of those kids may grow up to perform

many uplifting and happy spinal reconstructive operations by noninvasive

off-site computer program.

This, too, shall pass, Elissa. You will feel tons better, and not too long

from

now. This might sound stupid, but way far in the future, like eight months

down the road, you will almost not believe how great you are then compared

to now.

I am so relieved. Bravo. Welcome back. You did it. It's over. Thank you

so much for writing. Be well, rest up, applaud and & praise yourself at

frequent intervals, with abounding admiration and awe. What a trooper..

Love, long-distant virtual hugs, kudos, shalom,

---

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