I was absolutely, positively not worried about Mother's surgery. In fact to the point I thought something was wrong with me, but the truth was/and is that I trust Dr. Swartz implicitly -- it was in his hands.

Unfortunately I truly wasn't prepared for "after surgery".

Moments after my surgery the only pain I recalled was my back and the nausea from the anesthesia.  I swear once I got up to my room all I did was sleep till eleven at night, then the nurse had me get up and walk and I bounced outta bed.  Mainly I was just cranky to be stuck in the hospital and the bed bothered my back. When I got back to the hotel we never even bothered to fill my prescription for the liquid Lortab -- I honestly experienced hardly any pain.

But Mother was fit to be tied; she was restless and stubborn with her blood pressure shooting through the roof.  She was in an extreme amount of pain and discomfort.  I've seen this woman go through two separate total knee replacements -- she ain't no wuss.

She's hardly a few hours outta surgery and wants to sit up which right away Russ and say, "Whoa! Whoa!  I don't know if you should do that yet."  But she's uncomfortable, her back is killin her so the orderly gets in there and between the three of us we get all her apparatus to one side and help her up.  She did sit up very well for an old gal who just had one helluva major surgery, and that gave me a bit of comfort.  I kept reminding her to smack the pain button, in the hopes it would knock her out cuz that's just what she wanted.

Then we're introduced to drive-by nurse for the evening who says, "Hi", then breezes outta the room.  The way Mother was positioned Russ was concerned that under all the drugs she might not be aware of hurting her knees.  Drive by nurse takes a quick peek and says, "Oh she's on her side, that's a good position."  Then she went off to spread wisdom and joy elsewhere before her shift ended.

She was worthless, but we were very fortunate to have a very attentive orderly.  He was always in there checkin on her, because he knew she was havin some difficulty.

But I just felt helpless and guilty as all get out.  I said that the surgery part itself never bothered me much.  And there's nothing I can do to make it better.  Usually it's whip outta book, run to the drugstore, prop her legs up, rub cream on her back.  There was nothing I could do to just poof make it all better.

She was so bloody determined to sit up all the time.  Well this meant that the compression booties had to be taken off.  Well then when she chose to lay back down we gotta go find someone to get 'em back on -- unless of course everyone is down with blood clots.

I guess several times it looked as though I was about to burst into sobs.  There was a nice lady waitin on her friend, she must have noticed this cuz she kept pattin me on the back and trying to reassure me.

In one sense I wanted to stay there, in fact I felt it was my duty.  Make sure she's comfortable and make sure some damn nurse is paying attention.  Then again I was also literally coming outta my skin and just needed to leave.

I' m serious.  There was this gaggle of ill-behaved Asian children who seemingly kept multiplying out of nowhere.  I was ready to start chuckin Asian kids through 3 story windows.  In fact, work me up enough and I can chuck 'em through 3 story windows on ground level -- that takes talent.  At one point I said, "Jesus! There's more of 'em?"  Russ tried to tell me to shhhh, but I said, "It's not like they speak English anyway."