Sympathy Pain and the Sympathectomy

Ethan was sick last weekend. If you don't know just how much it sucks to go to 3rd grade all week, only to get sick at exactly 5pm on Friday evening so you can be sick all weekend and get better in time to go back to school, just ask Ethan. He'll tell you all about it.

Elliot apparently thought staying home sick from church sounded like a fine idea.

I don't feel good.

Where?

All over.

Tell me one place.

My thigh.

Point to where on your thigh it hurts.

Right here (points to ankle)

That's your ankle.

Oh, where's my thigh?

Right there.

Oh, it hurts right here (points to thigh).

mmhmmm . . .

Speaking of pain, Matt is going in for his annual fall surgery tomorrow. Six surgeries in six years. This is the first on his ankle though--it's a new limb for him. To have surgery on, that is. He actually will get an epidural, so you know, we'll have that in common for future dinner conversation . . .

Remember when my epidural worked everywhere except the important place?

Oh yeah, at least you didn't have to shave your back before your epidural--or did you?

Of course, he gets to have a "walking epidural" which will last for 2 weeks post surgery. That sounds like fun. And he gets to use a knee walker/scooter thingy to get around. With the epidural in place, he's been told, he'll likely be in significantly less pain than he has been in the past 7 months, for the duration of the epidural (and hopefully longer, if the surgery is successful). I keep seeing images of him careening recklessly down the block on his knee scooter shouting "WEEEEEEEE" as he holds his epidural pump in the air, tubes trailing out of his hairless back. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'm not about to say anything to the doctor. Or the scooter rental people.

His epidural is intended to be a sympathectomy--a block of the sympathetic nervous system. I'm thinking though that I probably could use a sympathy transplant as I can't seem to find my sympathy anywheres these days. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I once had a sympathectomy, and more than likely an empathectomy too--as preventative measures of course, no sense leaving me open to a future calling as a Relief Society President.

ps. We've been officially married for 11 years now. We celebrated by hiring a baby sitter for a couple of hours on the gamble that Matt might be feeling well enough to leave the house. We did, we actually went out to dinner alone and came home and went to bed in separate bedrooms (so I can't bump Matt's foot inadvertently and he won't keep me awake all night tossing and turning with pain and medication-induced insomnia). Living the dream . . .