This is NOT Resectile Dysfunction: It's just a bump in the road!

(Dad getting his PICC line)

Hello, Dear Ones,

My, how fast time flies when you’re having fun. I’m not sure just where this past week has gone, but perhaps by reviewing it, I can account for it.

Dennis is presently happily registered in a four-star private room at the Huntsman Resort. This is where he has been since the wild ride to the E.R. on Saturday night. And by the way, I guess I suffer from “series TV,” but when we arrived at the hospital that night, I had sort of expected Patrick Dempsey to be there just waiting for us. Lately I’ve been thinking I shouldn’t believe everything I see on TV. Anyway, because of the long holiday weekend, we were unable to have Dennis’ stent replaced until Tuesday. It had become occluded and was causing infection and pain. So for what seemed like an eternity, we were in management mode. Trying to deal with Dennis’ pain was the main challenge, but we had a fair degree of success with sparkling conversation, watching the complete DVD collection of Veronica Mars, and a whole lot of morphine. (They even gave some to Dennis!)

On Tuesday, Dr. Jason Wills replaced his stent. He is a remarkable doctor and friend, and after the procedure, he came in to explain what he did and why he did it. Apparently, and I hope I get this right, there was a lot of sludge build-up in his carburetor, causing toxic emissions and expulsion of particulates in the atmosphere. Dr. Wills put in a new stent, sucked out the bad stuff, and said Dennis was good to go until surgery. We were glad to get that done, but apparently there had been a fair amount of infection. So they put Dennis on massive doses of antibiotics, the names of which sound like guys I used to date. Then he spiked a fever, and it was determined that he should not be discharged at that time. I was disappointed, but deferred to the doctors’ decision (besides, we still have 24 more episodes of Veronica Mars to watch) He had a PICC line put in because he must remain on antibiotics until our date with Dr. Mulvihill, so it is back to the old Saran Wrap showers. Oh well, small price to pay for the opportunity of going to surgery. Nevertheless, I think we’re all ready to get out of Oz altogether. Especially Dennis. He’s been clicking his hospital socks with the grippers on the bottom together and repeating, “There’s no place like home.” He is getting his strength back, however, and yesterday he even crushed a styrofoam cup in his bare hands. We just have to work on recreational feeding and see if we can get that boy some contours. Not that a straight line isn’t a perfectly acceptable geometrical figure. Besides, as I’ve always said, curves and gender-defining attributes are highly over-rated.

And speaking of surgery, Brodi was able to download the Whipple procedure from the internet. We watched with great fascination, although it was rather graphic. Everything went smoothly in this surgical Whipple, and there was no occurrence of R.D. (medical abbreviation for “Resectile Dysfunction) It was easier to watch because the patient was anonymous, and the Clot had no emotional attachment vested in the guy’s duodenum. I am glad, however, that we will pace out Dennis’ procedure in our room watching anything but operations down-loaded off the internet. But as we say in Clotville,…”I’ll think about that tomorrow – when I get home to Tara.”

Oh, how we love your comments. I read them to Dennis as he was coming out of the anesthetic, and he said he preferred them to goofy limericks. He kept asking me to read them again. Funny, he never says that about our rhymes. Thank you for taking time to join us on this journey. We cannot express our gratitude.

We are going to the hospital this morning to spend another fun-filled day amidst fluids, wires, needles and procedures. We will post up-dates with better regularity.

Our love to all,

The Clot