"Look, there's the Drummond Ranch," I pointed out to our son Greg who was driving us across the rolling country terrain to Howard's eye surgery appointment in Bartlesville this morning. "That's where Ree Drummond lives," I explained about "The Pioneer Woman" who has a cooking show on the Food Network.
The herds of cattle scattered across the vast pastures caused Howard to remark, "My dad used to break horses. Mom said he would get tossed off, brush himself off and get on again." He was full of stories and remembrances this morning. The long drive and chance to visit with our busy son, not to mention the pensive mood the coming procedure induced, seemed to pull them out of him.
Howard soon had the nurses and attendants wrapped around his little finger as he chatted non-stop with them. When we were allowed to go in to his curtained cubicle just before the surgery, he obviously had learned their histories, church affiliations and family relationships, his sedative making him a little hyper, I think.
Greg and I were soon ushered back into the waiting room, where I noticed an electronic chart on the wall with blocks of numbers and symbols. I found that it was a progress chart with the status of each patient at any given moment. I wasn't sure what the symbols meant until I found the legend on a plasticized sheet on a table. A picture of opened scissors meant he was in surgery, closed scissors meant they had finished, an open door meant he was back in his room, and so on.
In no time at all, they came out and told us we could go back. I knew it would be relativly quick, but I was amazed to see my husband sitting in the chair as alert as anything, as if nothing had happened. It was only when he stood up I saw he was a little wobbly.
We had an hour or two to fill before we headed back to the doctor's office for post-op in another building, so we asked about a place to get lunch. We were directed to a quaint restaurant in a brick building downtown with some of the tables outside. The temperature was mild, and with the big umbrellas over the table, it felt like New Orleans or Kemah in Texas.
What a delightful lunch! Howard was ecstatic that the cataract surgery had gone so quickly and smoothly, despite his qualms of the past few days, and an almost party mood prevailed. After a delicious meal and warm conversation, we dawdled over a fantastic dessert: Bread pudding topped with a scoop of ice cream, covered in a wonderful pecan sauce all swimming in a pool of melted butter!
A quick tour of the charming city in the spiffy comfort of Greg's new car past a Frank Lloyd Wright "sky-scraper" and a view of the Frank Phillips home and other interesting architecture and sights ended with our going back for the post-op. A good report all around sent us home on a grateful note, with the patient all talked out and dozing under his dark glasses. What a great icon that would have made!
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