Update: This one's for the guys (ladies, you were warned)

OK, enough with the drama. I appreciate everyone who sends their love and prayers and tell me how they read what's going on and they cry ... which only makes me cry ... and I'm a guy; I don't cry!

Well, except at that scene in "Old Yeller" and the end of "Brian's Song" (the original, with James Caan).

I was going to try to be all high-tech (which would make my buddy Justin Saia laugh; he knows when it comes to technology I'm old-school - pad and pen vs. iPad), and insert a clip from the movie "Airplane!" - you know, the one where Robert Hays' character is sitting on the plane, telling his life story, and person after person listens to him and then commits suicide in a variety of creative ways.
 I'm sure the clip is on YouTube somewhere (and, yes, Justin, if I were truly high-tech, I could find it!), but I couldn't find it.

The truth is, this is kind of weird. In the trauma unit at UAB Hospital, every time you visit a patient you have to "suit up" (shout out to Barney Stinson!) - put on a gown and latex gloves. Every single time. I can't imagine how much money each of these disposable gown and glove combinations costs. I'd love to have the exclusive concession on this stuff.
Even more, the gowns are bright, Easter chick yellow, while the gloves are a kind of pale lavender or purple (I'm not good with colors; are lavender and purple even in the same family?). So every day I sit here, feeling like a giant Easter Egg that hasn't been found.
What is funny is to watch "newbies" - first-time visitors, so anxious to do everything correct out of concern for MG. The truth is, you can just kind of put your arms in the gown and drape if over your shoulders. If you tied it up, you'd be all day tying and then, of course, untying. But some of the first-timers start to do all the tie-offs - neck, waist.
However, I give MG's youngest brothers, Sean and Seames, credit. I think it was Sean who put his gown and gloves on, held his hands up in the air like a surgeon on TV, looked over at Seames and said loudly, "Do you concur?" That is apparently the total extent of his medical knowledge. It was pretty funny. Maybe you had to have been there.
Then there are the bags. Can I get mildly graphic? I'm sitting here looking at the bag that is holding fluid draining from MG's lung, and the bag that holds what is draining from her bladder. Then the nurse comes in and they draw stuff directly from her stomach to see how she is digesting whatever it is they are putting into her stomach.
I know that's gross. But that's life in the Trauma Unit that you never see on TV.
Oh - and traction. You'd think with all the advances in medicine over the last 100 years they'd have come up with something other than ropes and pulleys and weights. But they haven't. So there is this bar over her bed, and four ropes that hold these pads up that wrap under her leg. Then there is the pin they inserted all the way through her thigh bone (femur?) just above the knee that has ropes attached to it. All the ropes go back to the foot of the bed through a series of pulleys where there are other pulleys, and at the end of those ropes are a series of stacked weights. Not gleaming, stainless steel, shiny weights either; these look like they came out of the old Headland High School weight room - after my high school was torn down 30 years ago!
And, since I'm a guy, I have to admit I'm sooo tempted to play with it, to pull on the cords and watch her leg go up and down, to mess with the weights ... you know: just be a guy.

Enough with the grossness.
Today was an active day. They took MG down for a CAT scan this morning. I assumed it was to check some of the stuff in her abdomen (I think I've been graphic enough for one day), because after the Sunday night surgery the surgeon said he wanted them to do that.
MG comes back, and a woman comes in a few hours later and says, "she's got fluid on her right lung, is it OK if we put in a drain?"
Stupid me, I say, "What happened to the drain that was already in her lung?"
The lady (I don't know if she was a nurse or doctor or what, and Lord knows I don't want to offend anyone. I've done enough of that already) looked startled and started digging around under the blankets and gown on MG's right side.
"Wait," I said. "The tube is on the left side. That's where the damage was. Do you mean her right side, too?"
Turns out she did indeed mean the right lung. So of course I let them do the right side tube. Apparently, they felt one of the reasons MG wasn't waking up like they'd hoped was possibly because of fluid in her lungs.
Although they also insisted it wasn't unusual or any reason for concern that MG hadn't started to wake up.
So I pressed a little more. I wanted to know what else they did.
Turns out they did a scan of her brain while they had her down there, just to make sure there was nothing they'd missed earlier - no bleeding, and "no signs of a mini-stroke." I hadn't even considered that. That one got my attention. But they assured me there was no sign of any damage to the brain.
"Nothing there,'' the lady told me.
Hah! I knew it! I asked her if she would please tell that to MG when MG woke up - that her head was empty and there was nothing there!
Needless to say, the nice lady declined. Oh, sure, she can talk tough when her patient is in a coma, but she wouldn't dare say anything insulting face to open-eyed face!
And I don't blame her.

But MG is showing signs. I think I wrote about how one way they could tell if she was waking up was if she started breathing over the ventilator. The 'vent' gives her 12 breaths a minute. If she does more than that - she was doing 14 for about a minute Tuesday night - then two of those breaths were on her own, a good sign.
This morning, while I was sitting there, MG suddenly went up to 17 breaths a minute. I jumped up and started talking to her, squeezing her hand, encouraging her. And of course, she went right back down to 12 breaths and, I assume, back to sleep.
Her friend Sylvia posted "Ray, you know you always take MaryGrace's breath away!"
I like that.
It's a lot better than thinking I put her to sleep.

A little later, this new nurse Rachel was in there, and she started shaking MG and calling her "Mary!" I figured, what the heck, and joined in. (Another "Airplane" reference: I thought about all those people lining up to slap the hysterical woman. If you haven't seen "Airplane," I'm sorry. It's a really funny movie - at least, it is if you're 18 years old, and you've been up all night, and you're with a bunch of guys in the  fraternity who've been trying to see if you get drunk quicker on a keg or on daiquiris. Now, those of you that know me know I don't drink, so I was the judge. I don't remember who won).
Anyway, we're shaking and calling out to MaryGrace and I'm squeezing her hand and we see an eye flutter. Her eyebrows go up. Her eyelids twitch. She's trying - really trying.
We're yelling and shaking - gently - and talking about where she is and who has been in to see her and anything I can think of that might get her attention.
"There's a sale on shoes at DSW!" I say.
And then she settles back into restful repose.
But half the nurses immediately ran out of the building. (Rim shot).
We called a halt to it, because a line was forming out the hall with people holding black jacks and baseball bats and pipe wrenches .... sorry, another "Airplane" reference.
Come on - you've got to admit that's a funny image!

I did speak to the orthopedic surgeon. The plan is to go in on Monday afternoon and do the pelvis repair/rebuild. He said the surgery would last anywhere from "four to six hours."
Maybe I'll call Steve Phillips to come down and we'll watch "Monty Python's In Search of the Holy Grail." I guarantee that will cause MG to roll her eyes.
Can you tell I'm a little stir-crazy?

From my buddy Glenn Stewart: "Ray...forgive me for being so late in sending this note, but I was out of town and just heard the news about Mary Grace. ... I'm going to offer some advice from my own experiences with internal surgeries...tell her to hang on to any and all organs that had to be removed and place them under her pillow. Trust me, those stupid fairies will buy anything!

That's from a man who has seen Airplane and Monty Python one too many times.
(I hate it when the audience is funnier than the comic.)

I'll be here all week, folks. Tip your waiters and waitresses.