Pump in

At 11:35 a.m. Mon., July 13, they wheeled Ken into OR. He was in as much pain as I've seen him. The anestheologist , a competent-looking Dr. Andrews, broke protocol and administered a sedative before he was done reading all the paperwork. "I can't stand here and read this and watch you suffer,'' he said. That's when I realized that my earlier admonition to Ken to quit moaning so loudly because it was scaring other pre-op patients had been really misguided. (It wouldn't be the first or last time I had that realization.)
By 1 p.m., Dr. Lieberman walked into the waiting room with a wide smile and a hug and said that the operation to insert the pain pump had gone beautifully. He'd filled it with a cocktail of numbing agent and a pain killer and a teeny tiny bit of morphine. And from here on out we'll go to Dr. Lieberman's office and slowly begin adjusting the mix until he's without pain. The surgery was a success and the real pain management begins.
By 3:30 p.m. he was in his room in ICU. He ordered dinner (tomato soup, chicken caesar, pudding and ice cream) . He hugged Lucas and told him he was the best son ever. Talked to Amanda on the telephone and told her she was the best daughter ever. He beamed a squint-eyed love missile to me. He was oozing love and good will. That would end.
The good surgery juice that had led him to slumber through the pump insertion wore off quickly. He told us the next morning that he was up all night. The weary edge was back in his voice. He'd finally gone to sleep in a chair. But less than 24 hours after surgery he had had physical therapy. He had walked. He had blown into that plastic contraption with the ball that you have to keep suspended in a chamber. He had managed to break his Kindle (again) and he was on a first-name basis with the morning nurse, Dee.
We took him home at noon and put him to bed, where he is now slumbering. He has some pain but nothing like he did Monday at 11:35.
Pain management now begins not with piles of pills plopped in his mouth four times a day (although he still takes a lot of pills orally) but with a willowy catheter that floats in his spinal column slowly emitting teeny teeny tiny micro-size drops of morphine into his spine, 1000th the amount he's been taking. The prayer is that does the trick.