Most loving & thankful greetings to everyone. This is mikastabb, hijacking john's myspace to send out the word that hubby stabb came thru last evening's surgery w/ hardcore colors! Hooray!! ~ :D

Both j & I place terrific faith in our gut feelings about people, and after many medical missteps last week, we knew that Dr. S. was the right guy for us. We were rewarded yesterday by his clear competence and amiable, intelligent bedside manner; in fact, the entire team & associated staff over at Washington Hosp. Ctr. were just stellar. OF COURSE john pegged one of his pretty prep docs as, erm, in on the killtaker, and yep, turned out she was blushingly thrilled to have the mighty ex-G.I. as a patient. ("I am there!" she promised about the band benefit!). So before the metal plates & braces in & around his mouth shut him up, my honey managed to enthrall a small cadre of divers bright-eyed sweet young thangs in scrubs. Seriously, they were such an attractive, sharp, ambitious, cross-demographic bunch, we felt like extras on "E.R."

They, and all of YOU wonderfully caring folks, have made this potentially scary-awful facial reconstruction surgery damn near a pleasure … which I realize sounds freakish, but we genuinely feel deeply, deeply blessed by your demonstrations of love these past few days. john mused that "so much good has come out of so much bad." And that's totally true. We feel nurtured and moved, cradled in your collective affection & generosity, and it is tough not to feel abashed by your outpouring.

Thank you, thank you, one and all.

The surgery itself took about 4 hours, though we were there all day. It was great to get that time to let each step of the process sink in. I would've wanted to watch the operation, but I didn't press the idea after I first brought it up last fri. w/ Dr. S. (I love that kind of stuff & also didn't relish leaving john's side. This is the first crisis of our still-nascent marriage, you know! ~an emotional journey, indeed. I must say, I think we're both handling it w/ panache, don'tcha think? ;) ). John is now the proud owner of some 5 or 6 titanium metal plates shoring up his "zygomatic tripod" bones (around the eye orbit) and his upper jaw, both of which had been sliding around; a screw (I think) under his right eye; a wide, leathery splint over his nose, SilenceOfTheLambs-style; and temporary braces readjusting his teeth. The jaw alignment came out "better than expected": so far, they have opted against wiring his jaw shut, although we will reevaluate later this week. He will need to wear clueless-old-guy huge bugeye sunglasses to protect the incision along his right eyebrow, destined to leave a wicked-cool war wound. All in all, a kickass operation.