Take a trip on the Reading Railroad! If you pass go, collect $200.

So surgery happened last Wednesday, on the 3rd. He was in and out in about two hours then admitted in-patient and stayed until Friday.

Everything with the surgery went really well. On his right nub excess skin was removed and a deep, cavernous scar was revised (it's called a "re-vagination" and I can't, for the life of me, say it without laughing). His left nub had been causing him some pain and the surgeons found out why: there was a fairly thick and angry nerve wrapped around a small HO spur. So the nerve was cut, the HO removed, and he was stitched up. His left nub will look almost exactly the same. His right nub has more shape to it, without a lot of skin bunching up and rolling around in his prosthetic. Speaking of, he should be back on those in about three weeks.

His pain has been very well managed since Wednesday. The epidural came out on Thursday, and he has only been taking his Percocet and ibuprofen since then and not all that often.

We have kept ourselves busy playing board games. His parents are in town and a friend of mine came up from Quantico last night. Sorry, Life, Monopoly, Clue, and backgammon have been the main sources of our entertainment. Yesterday we took a field trip to Target and Aaron drove.

Everything has gone really, really well and while a small voice in my head is saying, "Too well?" another voice is whispering that maybe this is how it's supposed to be! Pain, under control. Recouping from surgery quickly, check. NO MORE SURGERIES, CHECK!!!!!!!! I am so cautiously optimistic. I definitely don't have the long-form happiness gene and I struggle with hope because hope can kill. Hope can make you wish and pray for things that weren't ever going to happen anyway, and then you're just left broken-hearted. But this time, things are different. We can hold our breaths just a little less, and maybe believe that we've been thrown a bone in this whole process. A year later, and we might be well on our way.

I did the math and realized that out of the 13 months here, Aaron's only been in active walking recovery for about four. If you take out the time for the HO, pain issues, and major surgery in April that is what we have left. I don't know if I've mentioned it before but Aaron is also 33 years old. While he certainly doesn't "feel" old his body does not lie. A lot of these younger guys- and there are plenty more of them than there are of Aaron and his ilk- can push themselves to the max and recover in a day or two. Aaron simply can't do that. Aaron wants to get out of here and on with his life just as much as the next guy. It's really frustrating when people credit speedy recovery with wanting to leave. Of course my husband wants to be done! Jeez, people. (I think it's  a pretty negligent thing to say, actually.) But just like we learned in our preschool years, wanting something bad enough won't always make it happen. In fact, the two are seldom connected at all. We've talked to a few other "salty dogs" and it helps to know that we aren't the only ones dealing with these issues and having these same feelings.

But maybe this is it. I couldn't be happier with how well the past five days have gone.