Jen's Health Updates: Rough Evening, Bright Morning

Last night Jen got progressively nauseous after dinner—until she finally did throw up an hour later. It was uncomfortable, as we all can relate to, but it was also painful, scary, and reminiscent of those life-threatened moments just hours before emergency surgery.

But, she felt better afterwards and she slept well last night. This morning, the docs all swept in with their white coats flapping, the affable Dr. Cho now suddenly accompanied by two fuzzy-chinned residents. One of them has apparently been assigned to Jen, and he does all the talking now while Cho leans quietly against the counter.

It's weird because we've been putting all our faith and hope in Dr. Cho. As a "Fellow," he's not one of the main surgeons—like Whiteford and Ahmad. But, Cho is the workhorse as far as Jen's care is concerned, and now he's laying out for this prepubescent guy wearing way...seriously...way, way too much cologne. They were in here an hour ago, and you can still smell the guy.

Nevertheless, the resident seems nice enough, truth be told, and maybe knowledgeable—who knows how much Cho told him to say and how much he really knows? But the main thing, what I'm getting at, is that "Dr Smelly Pants" (you wear that much scent around JZ, you're gonna get a new name) "decided" to remove another one of her drains.

Down to one!

And there is more great news: her white blood cell count is down to normal—with no fever running now, she *appears* to be infection free. They theorized that one of the antibiotics might have brought on the nausea and, since those have run their course and are no longer needed, she can be free of those too.

No doubt, there will be more difficult moments. But, ever since Dr. Ahmad (whose presence we miss terribly) cleaned out Jen of the terrible infection that occurred after her (successful!) (mostly) bowel resection and anastomosis, she has felt, by and large, much better than she ever did after the first time.

We're on a new trajectory towards full health. It's the one which we had originally hoped and expected to be on after surgery #1, but setbacks absolutely do happen. The trick is to not despair. We had to suffer some serious heartbreak, and Jen some even more serious pain and misery. But, that's OK—we're wiser now (hello, First Noble Truth!), and, by the time this is all behind us, will have that much more to offer the world.

Home, we think,tomorrow.