Nancy's Major Award

Last Saturday morning, Nancy called me and screamed into the phone, "Oh,my God! You won't believe what just arrived!" It seems that the UPS man had just come to her door struggling under the weight of a huge carton. As Nancy watched in surprise, he managed to get the box through the doorway and drop it in her foyer. She couldn't imagine what could be in such an impressively large box and was reminded of the famous scene from A Christmas Story during which the leg lamp is delivered to Ralphie's father.

Now it seems that a few days before, Nancy's visiting nurse had told her that a "wound vac" had been ordered by her doctor to help speed up the healing of her incision. The nurse had assured her that this was a small device that she would wear against the wound under her clothing. In fact, the pamphlet the nurse gave her explained that, "A convenient carrying case is provided to allow discreet delivery of therapy". Nancy was aware that her discreet little wound vac would be delivered by within a day or two. So she thought, "OK, well that doesn't sound too bad...I guess I can handle that" and didn't think much more about it...until last Saturday morning.

When she called me, Nancy hadn't dared open the box yet. She was simply trying to imagine walking around with whatever was in that carton attached to her stomach. She asked me if I thought we would need a flatbed cart if we went shopping together so that I would be able to push both her and her wound vac through the aisles. Needless to say, we got laughing pretty hard as we imagined the future impact of the wound vac on her already crazy life.

So...Nancy is now wearing her latest major award (as if Cancer wasn't a big enough major award!) and she's doing so with her typical good humor. After all, it did come with a handy ten foot extension cord!

As Gilda said, "It's always something!"