Where to begin?

How to explain the 180-degree turn in my life over the last six weeks? Things that were no longer are, and things that were not suddenly have become.



Cryptic? You betcha. Paranoid, me?



You have no idea.



Seems safest to begin at the beginning, with one of the two scheduled items for the new year. Dad had been to the doctor last Sep or Oct, and they saw something they didn't entirely like. So I recommended he go talk to one of the guys here, world-renowned for that particular part of the anatomy. The long & short was scheduled surgery for early January. So Pop goes in, figuring on a 3-5 day stay in the hospital, then 4-6 weeks recovery.



So here comes the first curveball, and it's a doozy. He's in for a few days, and if anything he seems worse as time goes on, not better. I'm there every night till 9-10PM, my brother's there all day (including, heroically, staying by himself there for Shabbos so dad would have company.) Sunday night he is in terrible pain, and Monday they tell us they're taking him in for emergency surgery in an unrelated area. I am now running all kinds of insane, paranoid fantasies in my head that he's not going to survive.



Happily, none of them came true. The second surgery went well, and Pop was quickly on the mend. He's home and recuperating now, and while he's looking older (and thinner) than he did before, he's mostly himself again. I think he's getting a little depressed, but he's been on the shelf for a long time, so I don't blame him.



So, that was stress enough, without...