Weee're gonna have a hog killin'!!

There was no squealing except maybe the giggles. The doctor's handshake was pretty low key, but the twinkle in his eye suggested some good times ahead. And, that twinkle was right on---as was the doctor.

Dr. Michael DeBenedetto is our mother's sixth physician that she has seen this week; that includes the cardiologist who told her she's good to go with that much improved heart. Well, she's been good to go all right----constantly from doctors' offices to emergency rooms, and we're still going to be on the road today, but we're hoping we've turned the corner in this slight detour on our mother's path to good health.

After lots of I-V antibiotics to fight off the infection injected into her right hand by that innocent cat bite, Dr. Dickens called on Dr. DeBenedetto to look at Mother's hand. There were growing pockets of infection beneath the skin, and they needed to be released. So, when the good doctor who's an orthopedic surgeon hailing from Ohio walked through the door and took a look, he immediately announced, "There's gonna be a hog killin' in here."

The hog killin', however, was going to have to wait a couple of hours while he went to the operating room to fix someone's ankle. In the meantime, Mother read the newspaper and napped while the morning antibiotics dripped into her system. I called my sisters and told them to come on down.

Shortly after they arrived, Dr. DeBenedetto returned, along with Dylan Food, the 1999 SHS grad who's going to medical school in Pennsylvania and hanging around Sandpoint's ER to observe. He's planning to be an ER doctor. He'll graduate in two months and will move on to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit as an intern. Both Barbara and I taught Dylan---photography and journalism, respectively. So, it was kinda neat for us to see our student assisting the surgeon.

Dr. DeBenedetto probably hasn't missed his calling, but Saturday Night Live could use him any time they need a fill in. He also does a good job of attracting an audience. From time to time during the half-hour surgery, heads kept popping through the curtain, just to watch the action as the comedic doctor kept us all laughing and his hands pretty darned steady while administering about half a dozen shots of anesthetic into Mother's hand, having Dylan slit it open and then working his instruments through the pockets of infection.

Mother grimaced a few times. She used that word in describing her reaction to the pain and wondered if it was the precise term. Her eldest English teacher daughter assured her that "grimace" was, indeed, the proper term for her facial expressions.

One time Dr. D (as the nurses call him) summoned her to look at the hand as he gleefully pulled the drain tube back and forth through the two openings. She did more than grimace on that observation. In fact, I don't think she looked back that way again until the hand was sewed up (by Dylan) and wrapped up by the funny doctor. The hog killin' was over. At one time, Mother said the pain was worse than any of her seven times at childbirth. She was a trooper!

The guy knew his stuff. The hand looked 100 times better when those mounds holding that infection had disappeared. Mother and my sisters went back to the hospital last night for another dose of the I-V antibiotic. She and I will go again this morning and will later go to a hand therapist, followed by a visit to the hog killer who will see how her hand is progressing.

So, this innocent cat bite continues to dominate Mother's life. That doesn't make her love her Rowdy any less. She pretty much figures that he feels really bad. She also figures that the good doctor yesterday made a horrible situation go pretty well with his humor. Since we're a family who thrive on humor, we all agree.

And, we all agree that the staff at Bonner General Hospital's ER is topnotch. We've gotten to know a lot of them over the past several days. They've taken excellent care of our mother---especially during the hog killin', and for that we appreciate them very much.