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Thank you, EVERYONE!  And my apologies for being away from The Waters for so long. I miss you all and need to find my poetry hat again.

The surgery -- cholecystectomy (having my gallbladder out) -- was on January 31st. It was iffy as to whether I could have a laparoscopic procedure because of the likelihood of scar tissue from previous abdominal surgery (20 years ago). I had about a 50/50 chance of an open procedure. But, the doc was able to do it laparoscopically (whew!) and everything went just great. I was 100% back to normal in 10 days, pretty close to that in 7 days, really. Had hardly any pain during recovery except for the first couple of days -- and that was mostly referred pain. Short explanation: During the surgery, the diaphragm gets pushed around and irritated. It sends pain signals to the C3/C4 level of the spine. That happens to be the same place to which the shoulders send pain signals. When the signals reach the brain, it "misreads" them as indicating a shoulder problem and produces excruciating shoulder pain. The brain is right, of course, at least 98% of the time. That is, when it gets pain signals from that region, they're almost always really caused by a shoulder problem. I mean, who has diaphragm pain? It's fascinating. Wouldn't you think that, perhaps, once you know that there's nothing wrong with your shoulder, the brain would get the message?

Anyway, glad that I did it, glad it's over. It was good to do this as an elective procedure when I was in good health. It would be terrible to have an infected or gangrenous gallbladder, or to have to have surgery at an inopportune time (like the day before flying to France!). A friend's husband just had such an emergency.

Had a great experience all around. My surgeon and the chief surgical resident both have great bedside manner (so unusual for surgeons!). Even the anesthesiologist hung out and chatted before I went to the OR. My surgery was at 7:30 AM and I went home at noon! And Tom waited on me and took good care.

Love to all. And thanks for all your good wishes.

Toni