I helped Dad gather up some firewood this morning, a nice big old pile o' logs. You know there's little he likes better than a good blazing fire, so long as the fire is in the fireplace. Mum likes fires too, and that's good- he's got her installed in the easy chair opposite the hearth and what with the Percocet washed down with wine, she's not going anywhere.

Her convalescence continues apace, in fact she's looking real good, a lot better than anyone really expected. Even right after the operation she looked good. Tired, but good. She's really starting to get the hang of this whole "surgery" thing now- thankfully, seeing as what a fiasco her last operation turned out to be. That was the deal with her knee replacement, three years ago now, and still not right. She was the lucky one in two hundred or whatever to be afflicted with something called neuroma (or something like that) following the replacement, apparently some sort of nerve damage which, if not incurable, is at least well beyond the curative ability of her surgeon. "Getting old is the pits" she tells me, the only time I've ever heard her use the expression "the pits".

Dad seems to be enoying his newfound sense of purpose, fussing about like a mother hen, starting fires and attending to mother's medical needs. Foremost among these is dealing with her drainage device, a small rubber sac attached by a tube to her wound, the size and shape of a hand grenade, but packing (when full) a far more distasteful payload than any mere hand grenade. I simply can't bear to be around when he decants the fluid within into a specially calibrated beaker, swirls it around, and holds it up to the light as though it were some precious liqueur. I'm long gone by this stage of the procedings, of course, so I can only guess as to what nefarious purposes he has in mind for the stuff. At the hospital, they have a signpost in the parking lot with an arrow pointing the way to "Patient Discharge". Before now, I had always kind of assumed there was some sort of innocent explanation for the sign. But I'm not so sure anymore.

Tomorrow Mum learns her fate, what further deviltry the doctors have decided to inflict upon her.

I hope they've had their fill of torture. I'm not so fond of seeing my mom in pain.