dr. bessey weighs in

Talked with Dr. Palmer Bessey yesterday. He's the man who will do Nancy's surgery, still scheduled for sometime tomorrow. Hospital schedules are, how you say, "dynamic" so you're never really going into surgery until they're actually wheeling you down the corridor, but we should get a better indication today about exactly when they think it will happen.

Bessey was great. Calm, quiet, ready to sit there at the foot of Nan's bed until we were done questioning him. Sweet man in a bow tie.

Some emotionally disturbing news that doesn't change a thing is that the burns are third-degree not deep second degree, as we were told last Wednesday. Doesn't change the burns, just our understanding of them.

Weird, the power of words, or in this case, numbers. I've been walking around repeating to myself, "Second degree, at least its only second degree, second degree..." like some autistic mantra.

Well, no. Now the chant is "Third degree, at least its only third degree, third degree..."

Burns go up to six, god help us all. Amy and Sanjay prepared the Book for me last night, some fun bedtime reading, let me tell you.

We've got some options tomorrow, so we're going to ask a lot of questions today and see what we think. Turns out there are two ways of doing it. Both work and they do both regularly up at New York Presbyterian, so it's pretty much up to us.

Keep the Good Thoughts coming. You can really feel them up in the hospital room, sometimes it just gets calm and quiet and we can just sit there, knowing we're not alone and that whatever happens next is going to happen and worrying about it is a waste of energy. Like the way water gets quiet and calm right at the lip of a waterfall.

It knows its about to go for a hell of a ride and it just gathers itself for the drop.

I'm sitting here in an actual wooden barrel, just to nail that metaphor home. Hard to type, but I believe in complete metaphor commitment.

Splintery, too.

More when I know more.