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Hubby was released from Research Hospital yesterday around noon.  It was so good to get him home.

He's never had surgery before except when they inserted the coil in his head and then a year later went back to see that the coil was in place and holding properly.  To do that they merely inserted a probe into his groin -- so the truth is, he's never actually had a true, real live incision. 

Hubby claims he feels no pain and he IS able to tolerate a lot when he understands that the pain is a body ache.  He lives with horrible knees and whenever they X-ray them they tell him they don't understand how he's able to walk on them.  I honestly don't think I could function with that pain.  However, he's never had an external cut like an incision.  And I can tell you now, he's a big old cry baby when he feels somebody else has done the pain to him.  

He has the most beautiful incision in his shoulder.  Yes, they cut through fat and muscle to make a place for the pacemaker.  But it's small -- maybe three inches, probably less.  He has no stitches, just a covering of superglue over the cut. 

I, on the other hand, have been invaded four times, but the worst was the last surgery for gallbladder, just before everyone began to do laser surgery to remove them.  I was slit from my breast bone to my hipbone in a huge slicing arc across the front of my stomach so the scar curves around my belly.  Hubby's sister had breast reduction surgery during the 1980's and I remember her telling us there was something over 500 stitches by the time they had finished. 

So Hubby's little incision is so minor it doesn't even register on the scale of our big deal operations.  He never really had any sympathy for me when I'd come home from the hospital, all stitched up.  I remember him thinking that a delivery of a cold 7-Up from the frig was his helping me get better. 

But you should hear him moan and groan.  He's even taking pain pills voluntarily.  "Ouchy, ouchy," he cried in the middle of the night when the bedtime dose of meds had worn off.  "Stay away," he warns little Luie who loves to cuddle.  "You might hurt me. I really sore."

"I feel awful," he told me at noon.  "I'm just so tired."

"You've had surgery, silly -- with a full anesthetic -- that's what makes you feel so tired," I responded.  "You need to climb out of that bed and go sit up for awhile."

So he did.  But after an hour he gladly crawled back under his warm quilt, waiting for his personal nurse to serve him dinner. 

Geez!  Still I'm so glad he's home.  But I'm never going to let him forget he's being a weenie about his incision.  I found him standing in front of the mirror, examining the cut, which is beautifully visible through the super glue. 

I pulled up my shirt and pointed to my gallbladder scar which, even after 13 years is still a huge, ungainly welt across my entire midsection.  "See!  That's a scar!" I gloated.  "You've got a hangnail, you big baby." 

Here's a web photo of a pacemaker scar -- Hubby's is neater, and smaller.