Nine hours down, ??? to go . . .

Waiting, waiting, waiting . . . nothing tortures the soul, challenges the spirit, wrings the heart dry, makes the skin crawl more than waiting. In my book, anyway. Today, anyway. I'm so damn impatient (except when I make others wait for me. See how that works . . . ?). If only I'd learned meditation somewhere along the way, I could use this time to calm my mind, soothe my stomach, smooth the backflips in my heart, keep me in some sort of zen-state and embrace this waiting game. Trouble is, to calm this girl's ADD mind, I'd have to be sedated to meditate (medicate to meditate), which kind of defeats the purpose, now, doesn't it? Our lives, for the past ten months, have been one long waiting game, punctuated by spikes of crises . . . and I just keep telling myself that after today, we can move on. Dramatically, drastically, forever changed in so many ways, but able to finally move on. Right on . . .

Colorectal surgeon came out a few hours ago to tell us his role was nearly done and all had gone so much better than expected from his end. He's a smart-ass, that man, likes to give me crap, even when I ask serious questions. In a better frame of mind, I'd give more back. Told me this morning he likes to break for martinis mid-surgery . . . I think he does it for comic relief, to get the furrow-browed redhead to lighten up a little. . . he said he encountered no major issues during his piece of the surgery, no bleeding issues, nothing about nerves, other things being affected by the tumor, but I know better than to jump to conclusions at this point; it ain't over yet. As he stood up to return to the OR, I asked him to give Bob a kiss from me, whisper in his ear that I love him, when he went back in. He smiled, said he'd be sure to. . .

It's now 4:30, nine hours from when Bob first went in for surgery. Still no word from the orthopedic surgeon, the "star" of the show, the guy who's removing the tumor, or any of his teammates, as to how things are going. No news is good news, right? No news is torture. No news for nine hours makes my mind go in places it really doesn't need to go. Nine hour surgery. My god . . . my friend, Julie, has been sitting with us all afternoon. She said, "Just think though, they're closer to being done now, than they are to just starting." Wish I had more to share, but I will update again soon. Can't be more than a few more hours, right?