Smoking a cigar and drinking a cold beer.
Fireworks crack & flash color and light all around the night sky on the eve of the 4th.
Respectfully and humbly request prayer from those here of the Christian persuasion for my wife of 43 years.
Wednesday I'll have her at Integris hospital at 5:30 am. Heart surgeon Charles Elkins will saw her sternum in half, pry open her rib cage and cut her heart open.
He'll repair or replace her mitral valve.
Life has skinned my knee, bloodied my nose and blacked my eye a time or two. Always serves to remind me what a gift life is and how fragile it can be.
These moments starkly indicate what truly matters. It ain't music/video/movies/or books. Hell, it ain't even OU football. (Did I really just say that?)
93% chance the surgeon will be successful and she'll fully recover and live out the rest of her life, feeling a lot better to boot.
93% odds in your favor are some any handicapper will take every time.
(But they were the same odds my mother (R.I.P.) had 23 years ago and she didn't make it out of recovery. For 7 out of a hundred those odds weren't good enough.)
So I'm apprehensive, even as she is calm and strong and brave.
My redhead is tough as nails. Had to be to survive living with me all these years.
She'll be in ICU 2-3 days, then on the regular hospital floor another 3-4.
I can be in ICU 8am -8pm, but can't sleep in her room. It will be challenging to leave her side, even for 12 hours.
But, I will be there in the hospital and back with her @ 8am. When she gets to a regular room, I will not leave her side until I get her back home.
You won't have to put up with my musing for a week or so.
I believe in the power of prayer, and my peers here responded once before when I implored them for my better half. It worked too.
I believe it will again, so please for her ask the Big SOONER in the Sky to guide her surgeon's hand and grant her the strength to endure and recover.
Be assured of my sincere gratitude.
