It's been a long few days. My husband had surgery on Wednesday to replace his implanted morphine pump (battery life was about up). That went fine, but about 3AM Friday morning he woke up in pain and telling me something was not right. Within a few minutes, he was starting to slur his words and have trouble keeping his eyes open. Answering service had me drive him into a major hospital in the city. Spent 10 hours in the ER while the representative for the company that makes the pumps came in and did some reprogramming. They had switched pump manufacturers. The new pump is more precise and efficient, but that meant that the same amount of morphine he had been getting, less efficiently, from the old pump, was overdosing him on the new pump. We finally got to a room and by this morning he was alert and coherent again, and we were discharged by noon. He's back to the normal healing post-surgery again. Nothing is simple with him.

Thank goodness for an excellent pump rep and an excellent doctor. The doctor called me directly in the ER, gave me his personal cell number, and got on the phone with the ER docs (who really didn't know what they were dealing with). The rep and doctor continued to text and call me personally every few hours checking on my husband and being sure all was well. At one point, we were in the room as they were getting him settled and the doctor called me and spoke to both of us. The nurses all said that's one good doctor you have there -- hang on to that one. Yup. We know that. It took 30 years and lots of mediocre and downright bad ones to finally find him. Nothing like a rare medical condition to keep life a challenge.

So we're home. We're showered (we went there with nothing so we were rather odiferous by this morning). Our stinky clothes are clean. I finally had time to sit down and update the checkbook. Now I can relax.

This on top of Dad's two strokes has made for a busy and stressful three weeks. At least I'm off work for a week for Thanksgiving. Looking forward to a trip down to see extended family. Dad is making the trip too, so we are feeling very blessed at the moment.