I’m sitting at home right now, in the comfy recliner and taking it very easy. I’m so glad to be out of the hospital, in charge of my own meds and food, and have electricity again. Everything went very well and I wanted to thank everyone for your thoughts and prayers. The surgery went fine (from what I’ve been told since I was asleep), my spleen is gone, and I’m a bit sore but good. They only found one spleen, a good thing, though apparently its not uncommon to have sub-spleens. My platelet levels were at 148,000 this morning, slightly lower than pre-surgery, but still within the normal range. My next follow up is on Monday so hopefully we’ll start to see that number climb. It could take up to 2 weeks for the full effects of the surgery to take place. Being the somewhat unruly patient that I am, I took myself off the ‘liquid’ diet they had me on at breakfast when I ate a banana, Cheerios, and a Burger King Egg and Cheese sandwich. Lunch again, they brought me the liquid food and my Mom brought me a Subway Sandwich (thanks!!). I don’t know how they expected me to be satisfied with fluids only when it had been 31 hours since my last real meal. And on a final note “Condition Brown” means they are turning off the power to anything non-essential so you better have a good book or magazine and be in the bed near the window. Anyway, thanks again for all the love and support, I know that it helped and we are greatful to have so many good friends out there to support us.
Author: eajhnsn1
-
Surgery Update
Just got a phone call from surgery, Ana is stable and doing well and the surgeon has started working on her (roughly 25 minutes ago).
On a side note, there’s gotta be a better way to notify me of updates. The waiting room librarian walking over and saying she’s going to forward a call to me, scared the HELL out of me. Honestly, it felt like my heart was going to jump staright out of my chest. Damn, gotta calm down now.
-
Checked In
Hi everyone –
Ana is all checked in here at St. John’s Hospital. The splenectomy is scheduled for 3pm so we’re waiting in a little hallway with curtains called pre-aenestesia.
-
It’s 10:30pm… FIRE UP THE GRILL!
Since Ana has surgery tomorrow at 3pm and they told her that she can’t eat anything after midnight, the only logical thing to do is to have a feast around 11pm the night before!
So, Jay and Katherine are here and we’re getting ready to throw some steak and chicken on the grill.

This is our Easter dinner, since our typical plans got interrupted when the doctors told her she had to get another treatment of IVIG today.
-
Walgreens or CVS
The current poll Which do you prefer – Walgreens or CVS is getting an interesting result, yet one that I suspected. 9 votes so far for Walgreens and 0 for CVS.
I cannot explain it but I just don’t like CVS. Taken at face value, the stores are identical. They have red lettering, similar store size, and God knows they’re always within 100 feet of each other. Yet when faced with the choice, I choose Walgreens time and time again.
So I ask, what is so much better with Walgreens?
After spending a few minutes thinking about it (yeah, I can’t believe I actually sat here trying to quantify this), I have come up with the following:
- Walgreens has cursive writing – it has a warmer/friendlier feel to it (?)
- CVS has the big ugly hard block lettering.
- The CVSi (the “i” is for plural folks… come on..) I have been in recently have horrible doors. They feel narrow and constricting.
- In CVS, the isles are really crammed together.
- Every Walgreens in the universe has the same floorplan. (does CVS do this? I don’t know, I hate CVS remember?)
- Oooh! And who can forget the Walgreens brand products: Wal-tussin anyone?
Any other ideas as to why Walgreens is superior to CVS?

