Surgery Success! And stuff Tony wouldn’t eat if he were home.

Okay ladies – I have a tip for you.  At some point, you should learn how stuff around your house works, in the event that your handy husband isn’t here to handle them.  Lori, I am not talking to you – you are the most handy woman I know!

Case in point.  Our house was built in 1922.  Our furnace was completely replace over ten years ago – the old furnace was probably at least 40 years old and very non-efficient.  We have two small pipes on one side of the house that is the intake?  Not sure that the hell it is, but one time our heat didn’t turn on a couple years ago.  I get up way earlier than Tony and I remember blogging in the morning and our house temperature was about 50 degrees.   I thought for sure the furnace failed somehow.  Nope, turns out ice can form on those pipes and it automatically shuts off the furnace until you remove the debris.  So a couple mornings ago, I woke up, it was 54 degrees in the house and I get all my winter clothes on, go outside and see two things – one is a circular thing that is covered in ice and snow and then I see the two aforementioned pipes.  I take a broom and remove all the snow and ice off the circular thing, then check the pipes, I knock off an icicle and come in the house and the heat turned on in a minute.

When I got to the hospital, I told Tony “just so you know, I removed all the snow and ice from the circular thing, and then took an icicle off the pipe, and the heat came back on in a minute.  He started shaking his head.  I said “what??!!”  Um, turns out that “circular thing” is actually our air conditioning unit, which obviously does not need to have snow and ice removed from it since well, it doesn’t typically run during the winter!  And now I know what the circular thing actually is!  Thank you google images.  We have about 13 inches of snow!

Since I didn’t know what my week was going to be like – I took advantage of being home Saturday night from the hospital, grocery shopped and made my meal plan for the 21 day sugar detox that started today.
I did cheat a bit – there is supposed to be no dairy, but I did add 2 ounces of shredded cheddar cheese to this dish – so basically each serving only has 1/2 an ounce of cheese I figure that wouldn’t kill me.   Here is meal #1 that Tony wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.

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While this isn’t a great picture – it was delicious – the quiche almost tasted custardy?  I paired it with a 3.5 ounce thin pork chop and two pieces of bacon from the cafeteria.  I felt bad stealing their plates and silverware, so I felt I had to buy something!

I got to the hospital at 7:30 because the doctors rounds are usually around 8:00 a.m.  Turns out we didn’t find out until 10:00 a.m. that his surgery would go forward at 2:00 p.m.  I ate this breakfast around 9:00 when I realized that he wasn’t going anywhere fast.   Around 11:00 I ate 1/2 a cup of blackberries with a sprinkle of Truvia.

I did end up wearing long johns AND my snow pants to the hospital – I never know how far away I will have to park.  Turns out I had a good 200 feet until the front door.  When I left the house, this is what my car said:

And I have to tell you – by the time I got to the front door of the hospital, my nostrils were frozen!  I can’t remember this kind of cold in a very long time.  In fact, I think on WGN they said that in 1985 it was –27 degrees.  While I didn’t remember it being that cold, I do remember that I had a date to go ice skating outside back then and was pissed when my Mom told me I couldn’t go because it was too cold.  Do you remember that Mom??!!

So Tony was going to be having two procedures – an endoscopy and a colonoscopy.  The colonoscopy to remove the polyps, and the endoscopy to look from the throat down.  Well, it turns out that a medication that he was taking inflamed his liver which in turn caused verices in his small intestine and esophagus, and THAT what cause the blood loss.  The polyps were removed no problem, the bleeding was capped with a pin and hopefully with a switch in medication, that will solve the problem.  The waiting game begins again – as soon as his blood levels get back up between 2.5, they can let him come home.

I have to say, I loved the anesthesiologist.  He completely got our sense of humor.  Tony’s main concern was that he be completely out especially during the endoscopy – and the doctor assured us that he would be completely out.  To which Tony said “you can do anything you want to me, just don’t touch my penis.”  Ha!

That he was so relaxed before the procedure made me feel so much better about it.

Since I brought my breakfast and planned on having soup for dinner, my plan was to scoot to the cafeteria during his procedure and get a salad.  Nope – it was closed after 2. I ended up getting a “salad” at Subway, I use that term loosely because it was lettuce, spinach, banana peppers, cucumbers – mostly green stuff!  But with the deli turkey meat, it hit the spot.  And to make it 21 day detox worthy, I used olive oil and vinegar as the dressing.

The procedure turned out to take an hour and after 30 minutes in recovery, he was brought back to his room.  He was SO tired, SO thirsty and SO hungry.  He ordered food from the meal service right away and when it arrived, he told me to go home – the nurses were talking about black ice, cars not starting, etc. and he wanted to make sure I got home safe.  Just so you know, by the time I got home at 5:30 p.m., it warmed up to –16!

I decided since I got home earlier than I thought, that I would save my soup for my lunches, and decided to make a spaghetti squash pizza for dinner.  I know, sounds weird.  In fact when I talked to my Mom before I started making it said when I described the dish to her “sorry Biz, I really want to throw up at the thought of that!”

Blog reader Peggy is the leader of this 21 day challenge – I love her enthusiasm and she sent out an email today with a link to the recipe.  The only thing I didn’t have was the fresh basil or eggs – I had egg whites.  I also made a smaller portion since it was just me.  Meal #2 that Tony wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole:

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After 20 minutes:

The result?  I loved this.  Since I used egg whites instead of a whole egg – it didn’t get AS crispy, so it’s a knife and fork pizza, but this was delicious.  The edges actually had some crunch to them though!  And if my stats are right – this whole pizza is 373 calories, 24 fat, 10 carbs, .9 fiber and 28 protein.  I ended up only eating half!  I am going to heat up the other two slices later in the week and see if it crisps up on reheating.

Our temperatures are still going to be super cold today – schools are still closed so I have to go into work because one of my co-workers has a school aged child and needs to take the day off.  I’ll visit Tony before work and head there after work and hope that he comes home on Wednesday!

Again, thanks for your continued support these last few days – we appreciate it so much!  Make it a great day!