I am glad to report that I will return to the air on Monday, June 23^rd, at 9:00 a.m. Hope you can join me then.

     Although still a little tender, I am recovering from surgery that I had on June 5^th.  In the days since then, I’ve felt a little like the renamed seven dwarves—Groggy, Woozy, Itchy, Bleary, Fuzzy, Goofy and Doc. I left out Bitchy, you’ll note. I truly have nothing to complain about. I was lucky to receive the kind of excellent care and support that leaves me with only gratitude in my heart.

    I’ve been too intellectually sluggish to think about trying to add Bloggy to my dwarf-represented repertoire.  However, it seems that making sense in the blogosphere is not exactly mandatory…so here I go…and I’m in fine company if I ramble a bit!

     Last year, I had surgery at this exact same time, so there is a symmetry to my home bound healing, but this experience is remarkably different than before, when I was so fearful of all that was still ahead for me. Everything that I feared then is behind me now. Sometimes all of it seems like a bad dream and I’m awake again in my lovely reality. This year, I can relax and focus on feeling good. I breathe in the sweet fragrance of early summer with appreciation. The darkness has lifted. 

     I asked for my friends, family and listeners to offer prayers or healing words on my behalf on the morning of surgery.  I was thinking about that request as I enetered the operating room. I was already on an IV and they might have put a little somethin-somethin in there to make me all nice and relaxed, because I felt, well, all nice and relaxed. I looked around the OR and it felt filled with scores and scads of medical personnel—doctors, nurses, technicians, assistants, all identically attired in their blue scrubs. In a daze, I wondered, why so many people here? From all corners of the room, they turned in unison to look at me. All of their faces were covered with blue masks. 

     And suddenly, I thought I could recognize those faces, although they were hidden from the eyes down. Face after face, they transformed. The faces of these strangers, these masked men and women of medicine, turned into the familiar faces that I love best. It seemed as if I was surrounded by my very own army of angels—family, friends, my dearest ones. Maybe you were in there with me too.  Maybe you came to stand by me and lift me up.

     Ordinarily, this might have caused panic, because I do not come from a family of skilled medical professionals and few in my circle of friends majored in anything science related. Love them, but wouldn’t necessarily want most of them anywhere near the scalpel, dontcha know.

     But that somethin-somethin in the IV kept me from thinking logically. Instead, I felt a blessed calmness and an eagerness to let go and get on with it. A feeling that all was well and that I was free to float. It was like that serene feeling you had as a child, when you fell asleep in the back seat of the station wagon, confident that the powerful people in the front seat knew how to get you home and would settle you into your own bed without even waking you up.    

     I was on my back and a face bent over me. It was my surgeon, who was with me last year and who has given me kind and tender care in the past year. His eyes behind his mask crinkled and I could tell he was smiling.

     “We’re all here for you,” I heard him say.

     In the past when I’ve had surgery, there’s that dramatic moment when they put the mask over your face and the anaesthesia pumps in and you are quickly whisked away into that dreamless place. When the mask lowers, it feels like a point-of-view shot in a movie. I vaguely recall being asked to count backwards from ten, and never getting to the number seven.

     But this time, one of you in the room with me told me to say my children’s names. I smiled as I recited them…son, daughter, daughter, oldest, middle, youngest. By the time I got to my baby, I had gone over or under.

     And when I woke, my husband was there and told me I was fine.

     And I am!

     You blessed me and I bless you back. Thanks to so many of you, for being there for me and with me. I’ll thank you again when we get together on Monday morning.