The night before facing the knife, I lay down to sleep: Mantra boom boom boom, Mantra boom boom boom, but no sleep.
I got up and redid my wardrobe for surgery. Tried on three different outfits: the somber all-black-and-gray one won. Went back to bed.
Couldn't think of a thing but my work-in-progress, ZACK'S LEFT HAND, a historical novel. Ideas for it drifted through my mind. Suddenly I saw a way to solve the part that had stumped me. A Good Idea. As I watched, I saw it was a Magnificent Idea, pulling together a major theme in the work. Wow!
I leapt out of bed and sat at my computer to write this marvelous revelation.
After, I opened FaceBook to read the—so many—comments about my surgery. Many more than I expected. "Maybe a dozen," I'd thought, but FB said 174! I blushed. And every comment cheered me! I read all the way to the end, then tottered off to bed, and slept the remaining two hours.
Oh yes, and the surgery went well. I had practically no pain although my helpers insisted on picking up Oxycodone and making me take one. But six hours later, my pain was so slight I took a couple Tylenols instead. After that, nothing.
But here's the best part of the surgery: the doctor told me I have no cancer, none at all. So only my imagination had believed otherwise.
Imagination. The curse and the blessing of the writer.
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