Real Life Update

Well - after 4 hours of waiting for the procedure to begin, my sister's surgery was a success. The doc says she should be back to normal in about 2 weeks, which is great news. I had cornered him before the operation began and asked him what the odds were, and he said that for this hip, he could only count it about a 50/50 shot of success. Now I like a good coin flip as much as the next degenerate gambooler, but I had prepared myself for the call that it hadn't gone well, her hipbone had collapsed, and they were going to have to do a full replacement.

Instead I got the opposite call and now the doc wants to go ahead and do the same procedure on the other leg before the atrophication (is that a word?) progresses any further. At this point he feels that he's got about a 90% chance of success on that leg. Soooo, I'm a happy boy.

I really can't even express how much this chick means to me. She's 17 years older than me, and got married when I was a year old. From the time I was born, she pampered me just like I was her own kid, and her traumas trying to carry a kid to term before her daughters were born did nothing to alleviate that. I spent as much time with her and Wayne (her husband, who died my senior year of college) when I was a kid as I did with my parents, and sometimes more. I used to tell all her friends that my name was "John Givens Hartness Alexander," appending her married name onto my name. She really was a second mom to me growing up, and I love her daughters fiercely and protectively. So there was a lot of fear in the room yesterday.

Jessica and Stephanie (my nieces) are both single young women now, and Bonnie is all they have. So I was the one least freaking out, and my level of nutso was starting to peak pretty high at 6PM when the surgery was supposed to have started at 1:30. But it's all okay now, she's gonna be fine, even though we still don't know what caused this condition, if it's hereditary in any way, or if it may recur. And even though she's going to have to do this again on the other leg in fairly short order, now we've gotten the big hurdle behind us and we can move on. IN other words, Christmas is back ON!

Which is the other reason I'm at my office blogging from my desk on Christmas Eve. My Dear and Loving woke me up this morning and threw me out of the house. Apparently my Christmas surprise is being delivered or set up as we speak (virtually speaking) and my being there was a monkey wrench in her long-established plans. So I played the dutiful husband and got the Hell outta dodge. I needed an oil change anyway. And apparently a fuel injector flush and four new tires. Merry Christmas to you guys, too. Thank god it's a company car, cause I'd be shitting biscuits if I'd had to drop $500 of my personal cash on car stuff today.

Oh, in somewhat poker-ish news, I got Phil Gordon's Little Green Book yesterday along with all the other Amazon gifts I bought. I've started it and it's pretty damn dense. Not Harrington dense, but full of quick hits and theories that I feel like I'm going to have to go back and mull over a few times to absorb. It strikes me as almost the perfect back of crapper poker book, because the subchapters are pretty short, but require some reinforcement to absorb, so if it's on the back of the can you can go back to trouble spots again and again.

Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hannukah and whatever else you celebrate! Oh, and Happy Solstice, even though I think I'm late. I'm not cool enough to know what all the holidays are, so just have a happy, and know that you all mean a lot to me, especially all of you who read yesterday and sent words or vibes of encouragement while I was having a big old freak-out fit.

Peace,

John