The Thwack

I read and appreciate every text, every comment, every Facebook message, every email, every card. If our situation was a stewpot, we are at the place where the ladle can’t get one more full serving. We are scraping the bottom. I am both okay and not. I am calm and frenzied. I am sure of our path and actively pounding my internal brakes against it. I have stark facts I understand and complete uncertainty in most areas. I need, we need, a lot right now. I can put my finger on none of it.

This is what I know. Mark’s surgery will be Thursday at 7am. I keep checking and rechecking my math, but one stark fact is this: his surgery should be completed between10pm – 12am. Every two hours, I will be allowed to ask for an update. The update will be: everything is going according to plan. Unless something is wrong. Then I will get called in to talk to the surgeons in between the two hour vacuous check-ins. I will want to leave the hospital during the day, to get sun on my face and take a walk. I will be afraid that by doing that, I’ll miss some critical update from a surgeon. I will become very still and very isolated. It will feel like when I gave birth to each of my kids. I closed my eyes, went deep inside my brain, and rode the waves of contractions for hours.

If I was a pinball, I’d be entering the ramp down to the flipper. I’d have bounced and bounced and bounced against bumpers, racking up points in an unknowable game. Sliding down the chute, the strange hope is that I’ll get that solid thwack. To not get it is to lose it all.

I am not a metal pinball. I am flesh and consciousness. No matter the outcome, this is going to hurt.