Persons attempting to find a "text" in this [story] will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a "subtext" in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise "understand" it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR - Wendell Berry's introduction to Jayber Crow.
This article was posted to Jayber on 3 August 2005 by to the following categories: Family, Family.
An audio version of this article is also available.
A few people have asked how Brian's surgery went yesterday. Who better to tell you, than Brian and Jill themselves? Since I'm in Santa Barbara and haven't been able to be around, Brian and Jill sent me the following update via the miracle of Email.
Jill says:
Brian was scheduled for surgery at 1:00 pm. They called us at 10:45 am and asked if we could get there any earlier since there was a cancellation. We took off as soon as we could. Brian was to the OR by 12:15 pm where he waited until 1:48 pm. My being the resourceful wife that I am searched for him since it had been so long. I found him still in pre-op talking with his 2nd favorite nurse Prudence. He said they were saving someone elses leg so he was willing to wait. Brian, I might add, was very calm the whole day through.
Surgery lasted 33 minutes and consisted off manipulations of both knees. Basically the doctors just crank on them. They got the right leg to 130 degrees. Prior to surgery he could only bend to 90 degrees. Brian was a bit concerned that the guys who were going to be doing the manipulations were big guys.
Brian continues:
The aftermath of this surgery is one of extreme soreness. You can imagine, as Jill stated above regarding the degrees of bending, my muscles are really sore. It’s like having a partner stretching you in an athletic setting only to have them go twice as far as your legs could actually go. Manipulation - 2. The act of touching with the hands, of the skillful use of hands. So I’m sure that it was successful although it’s hard to say since it seems rather difficult and painful to stretch them at all right now.
A couple of other things that have developed since the surgery and my talking with Dr Templemen. The most prominent thing in my mind is the guarantee that I will be on crutches at the next Dr. Visit which is in 15 days, so in the mean time it means that I get to stretch like crazy and get the upperbody stronger. The other thing is that the open wound on the top of my left tibia is closing on it’s own so they didn’t close it and they also didn’t put a short cast on the left leg which I am happy about which also means that there was no need to put a wound vac on again which I was really not excited about.