Well Known Fact(ish): most medical mom’s (maybe most moms now that I think of it) appreciate a good glass of wine. My favourite vice is a nice Cabernet; although lately I’ve really opened up to a good Shirazzing. By lately, I mean pre-hospitalization because for some reason that makes no sense to me (and many of my friends) there is no alcohol served in hospitals: there is not even a pub on site! HELLO! – there’s a reason why drinking is called a coping mechanism? It helps us COPE!!! Honestly! Give me a couple more weeks and I will be sucking on hand sanitizer dispensers.

Anyways, on that note, I think I sensed before I knew that there were wineglasses in the hospital yesterday. I have what’s kind of like a booze super power. Able to hear a glass clinking a thousand miles away or the gentle whiff of a freshly uncorked bottle, I can sense wine with amazing accuracy. Anyways, yesterday my subconscious alerted me with a strong feeling that there was wine was on the horizon. I woke up an unnatural sense of optimism; I knew something special was coming.

Well…it turns out that the Shriner’s Hospital was celebrating their 4th year of getting 95% excellence ratings in their surveys of patient care, which is pretty impressive. So naturally Ben and I went upstairs to check it out (because we have no life and do…well…nothing. There was a special area set up to celebrate including two photo areas with Fezzy (the giant teddy bear symbol of the Shriners) and lo and behold a giant table laid out with rows and rows of wineglasses glistening with scarlet nectar! Hello! There were also fruit trays, and cakepops, bleh, bleh bleh. Woot Woot…yay spidey wine sense! I am AMAZING!!! We lingered nearby, and I took some pics of Ben – I didn’t want to appear desperate…and eventually we meandered over to the party table to par-tay! Cheers my friends – you deserve it!

What the hell!!! Juice!?!? Who in heaven’s name serves juice in a wineglass? That’s why it’s called a WINEglass. What if I served coke from a milk carton…wrong right – who does that? It doesn’t make sense. Despite the sticky sweetness, my mouth could only taste bitter disappointment. What kind of sorcery is this? I feel betrayed by those that I love most dearly…sigh…

Anyways, back to the medical side of things. Despite only having Ben’s traction on for two days, we have already seen some improvement. He had his first set of xrays yesterday. I will attach a pic. The one on the left was taken in July and the one on the right was taken yesterday. If you look at the back of the neck area above the neck screws but below the head screws (seriously – you see why I drink), you will see that there is slightly more neck on the right side than the one on the left. That is not bad progress for two days of light traction. We are still being very cautious as most of the change will be occurring in his cervical spine. But yay Ben!

Ben had a much better day today. He is feeling much more comfortable and some of the sensitivity of his screw holes (give me strength!) has subsided. We are both sleeping pretty crappily (is that a word?), but eventually exhaustion will take over and we’ll just collapse.

Tomorrow I am going to drop off a chocolate box with administration. I am going to put the finest blue cheese inside it.