I am very grateful that it’s this Friday and not last Friday because Steve is already one week into the healing process from his triple bypass surgery.

A week ago at this time, his body looked like the fields around our house after a spring rain except that instead of sprouting weeds, he was sprouting tubes and wires – some clear, some colored, some thick and some thin ones – out of his heart, chest, neck, and hand…and those were just the ones I could see above the sheets.

In the state his body is in today, he wouldn’t want to do any swimsuit modeling (then again, when would he?) because it’s not a very pretty picture; his leg has lots of nasty bruising from where they harvested the arteries, he still has a few punctures in his chest and neck, and of course, there’s the necktie-length incision where they cut through his sternum.

But hey, the fact that he is up and moving – albeit slowly and sometimes painfully – is amazing progress.

I think there are several reasons that he is doing so well. In spite of his disappointment in finding out from the cardiac surgeon that he has skinny vermicelli-like arteries instead of big, honking, rigatoni-like arteries (I think he should think of them more like capellini – that’s angel hair), he is in excellent overall health – he eats healthfully, isn’t overweight and exercises regularly.  And he is blessed with good genes so he looks at least 10 years younger than his age. I’ll bet his insides look as good as his outsides.

And to Steve’s credit, he went into the surgery very prepared. One of the ICU nurses even commented on it; he was ready intellectually, emotionally and physically which really helps to speed up the recovery process.

Steve is a soldier at heart; now his marching orders are to attack the hard and often painful work of getting his wounded body moving again. I know he will be victorious.