Mama's coming home on Thursday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, do you sense some excitement in how I started this post? I received the good—hell, excellent!!!!—news this afternoon after I had left the hospital to prepare dinner for Candace and myself.

(The pic shows Judy with Ms. Eddie from work on the left and sis-in-law Candace from Midland, right after receiving her new port.)

This afternoon, Judy received a new "central line" port. I was with her in the hours before leading to this rather minor non-surgery. Judy had been given not just one but two Ativant pills, a benzodiazepine that is used to combat anxiety attacks and that serves as a general tranquilizer. She swore she'd just had a stout margarita or two. You should have seen the woman eating her noodles and beans and jello. Personally, I think she had the munchies! Later on she told us how she was flying with Harry Potter and eating these butterfly noodles. Yessir. Classic case of drug-induced feel-good.

She came back from the short (30 min) procedure, still a bit addled. Later I was told that Doc Phillips had come by and told her that she'd leave the hospital tomorrow—and he also told her that he was concerned about her recovery but that in light of her already having spent three weeks in the clinic he'd let her go home. His words, according to Candace, were that Judy is not out of the woodwork yet.

So, the challenge is going to be to keep Judy out of trouble. If you guys get frantic phone calls from her telling you how cruel and unreasonable I am—mind you, I said calls from HER and NOT my students—ignore them. Tell her to forget about complaining. Tell her to go back to bed, or the couch, or the chair. She is NOT supposed to do ANYTHING for the next week, and knowing her, she will push the limits. Please help me. There was the time when she had knee surgery, I was off to the Tour of the Gila, and she "wanted to just see whether I could drive the Miata" and she got stuck in the car in the garage (w/o a garage door opener!!) with her leg brace and thought she'd be found as a mummy! OK, we all laughed, and it's really funny when you have her on speaker phone with four guys at a race in the hotel room after she's been able to extricate herself, after all. What Dr. Phillips made clear today is that her survival is going to depend on whether she can live up to his expectations.

I intend to be stern. I've put a lot into this, and I'm not going to tolerate Judy pushing the boundaries. I want her to be with me ten years from now. Days three and four will be the worst, I am sure. Maybe I'll tell you in a few weeks (after she's been a model patient) what she had intended for this weekend. If you'd know, you'd come here and tie her down. Seriously.

So, tomorrow I will tell you how the first day back at the casa was. I'm sure there will be challenges. And no, she won't be allowed to get into the waterbed for a week or so, at least. I'm glad that all of this is off my chest (because I honestly doubt that I want you to think of me as an ogre or any worse than you already do).

Jürgen