Greeting loyal airmen.  Your old air chief is back at the Hangar, after a very long week as a patient at Wentworth Douglas Hospital in nearby Dover, NH.  When Valerie and I arrived there at 6 AM on Monday morning, little did either of us realize that I would be spending the entire week.  You really can't plan these things out.  Ha.  The surgery, performed by Dr. Robert Harrell went super.  He is one of the finest doctors I've ever had the pleasure of knowing and truly a gifted surgeon.  So precise was his work, that within those first 24 hours after the operation, I was already on the mend.  The lower quadrant of my left lung was removed and sent to the labs for biopsy.  Oddly enough that has yet to return.  Meanwhile two very long plastic tubes were inserted into my chest cavity to help drain bodily fluids as I healed.  That would be a telling sign of when I was allowed to be discharged or not.  When Dr.Harrell and I initially talked this out, he'd guessed between 4 or 5 days.  The liquid did not turn clear, the indicator to pull the tubes, until Sat., the sixth day.

But all of that is neither here nor there.  I want use this log entry to thank a dozen of the most wonderful ladies I have ever met, the nurses (day and night) of the Ward 3  South – Recovery.  These ladies are so filled with good humor and spirit, they always kept me perked up, never once allowing me to get down.  They were simply amazing and kept me laughing from sun up to sunset.  I kid you not.  Enough so that my roommate, a local fellow who arrived a day after me, having had a piece of his colon (ouch) removed, were hard pressed to keep up with them with our own quibs.  But we gave it the old college try.

Denise, Laura E, Tiffany, Miranda, Lucretia (have you finished that last Harry Potter book yet?), Rosa, Jamie, Karen and the others whose names now elude my old gray cells, plus Dave, the one male member of this elite gang of carers. YOU ARE THE BEST NURSES IN THE WORLD!!!  THANK YOU & GOD BLESS.

To all you airmen praying for me these past two weeks, I will be forever in your debt. All your prayers were wonderfully answered.  I'm home, on the mend and eager to get on with this beautiful life.  See you all back here Friday for our next “usual” Log Entry

Ron – Over & Out