Waiting

     Last week my sister Dorothy had surgery for a brain aneurysm. One week ago today my sister Ruth and brother Dick and his wife Kathy, Dorothy's husband Frank, her son Chris and daughter-in-law Sonia and I held a vigil at UPMC in Shadyside (Pittsburgh). A superbly skilled neurosurgeon opened her skull, lifted her brain, and clamped the artery on both sides of the aneurysm, rendering it harmless.
     The whole event was a study in serendipity. The aneurysm was discovered through a CT scan and MRI to diagnose a persistent, severe headache. Chris had trained as a nurse anesthetist at UPMC and had worked with Dr. Wecht, the neurosurgeon. The man administering the anesthesia was a classmate of Chris's in the nurse anesthetist program. So Dorothy was in the best possible hands.
     Waiting through the hours of surgery and the post-op period, watching for her gurney to roll by on the way from the recovery room to ICU, waiting till we could see her — through all that time we were very aware of being upheld by hundreds of people praying.
     I was also delighted to have extended time with my relatives. They are a bright, funny, energetic, interesting group of people, and we don't get to spend nearly enough time together. This was a bonus — time to share photos, catch up on the minutiae of our lives, share iPhone apps, and generally enjoy each other. There was the underlying tension of waiting for the end of the procedure, of course. But we were distracted by each other, so the waiting wasn't too onerous. I think we all had the feeling that things would be all right.
     And that was reinforced as she was wheeled past the waiting room on the way to ICU, when she said to Frank and Chris, "Somebody get that guy's license plate." Frank: "What license plate?" Dorothy: "The truck that ran over me." We knew she was back, and intact.
     Saturday she came home. Sunday I talked to her for twenty minutes. She is herself. Now it's a matter of slowly getting back into her routine, healing from the inside out. But there is time for that. Thanks be to God.