Day 7 beads and Tess's poor hiney operation

Life in the world of glass melting is fascinating, scary, wonderful and exciting. Pretty much all at the same time somedays. My daughter's favorite colors are greens in between the olive and avocado shades, she was thrilled because I hit it. (her words) She loves all the orange and peachy shades, too. Also loves red. She wanted something to go with some of the clothes she has, but never found anything in the right color. The beads created last night were done specially for her.

I made one enormous kind of rectangular bead with neon green from ASK, and it was a giant fat rod which kept trying to crack on me. However once I kept it from shocking it melted right down and was pretty easy to shape. I flattened the sides then thought it would be fun to encase it in some clear green in the same shade. So of course I had to round it back up some and then square it off again. I added some of the flame kissed orange frit I had and voila you get the bead on the left. For the rest of the night I worked on some basic things I had been doing. A leaf green heart with the same frit, a couple of leaf green spacers, one with frit, one plain. Then I threw in a clear heart with frit, and then two clear drops. Playing with the clear glass is fun since it is so hard to tell if I have it hot enough or not. Until it starts to droop I really can't see the red hotness of it.


Enough jabber, here are the beads.

Tess is recovering from her surgery of last Tuesday. She had a pilonidal cyst removed from the tailbone area. She has had recurrent infection in this area for over 9 years now. The surgeon would have hospitalized her the day before surgery but there were no rooms available in our tiny little hospital. Fortunately he does 6-8 of these surgeries a year and felt it would be fine for her to be admitted just prior to the surgery. She was in agony for several weeks before surgery and will be in pain for some time to come. Hopefully the worst pain will be over within the next week or two. He told her she will still have a hole on Christmas, and possibly as long as until St. Patrick's Day. It will all depend on how quickly she heals.

During surgery she was of course unconscious and hospitalized for nearly 40 hours. She was only released then since I would do her packing and dressing changes. I have some medical experience since I have had some horrendous wounds myself. I have cared for others in nursing homes, and taken care of post-surgical patients, too. I care for dad and his urostomy needs, too. So the doc figured it would be just another day for me. NOT!!! I was not really prepared for how enormous the wound woud be. Imagine a golf ball sized chunk being removed with an opening about the size of a quarter showing, elongated somewhat, but about the mass of a quarter. I have to look inside the wound, and then fill it with roughly half a 4x4 square of damp gauze. Sounds fairly straight forward doesn't it. Not so much when you are hearing your daughter cry as you remove the old one, sterilize your hands, dampen the new one, and then pack it into the wound.

I have to "pack" her wound every morning and every night. It is a very painful thing for her to endure, but at least it should end the problem once and for all. There is still a bit of infection, but he said considering how infected it was when she came in it is no wonder. He says the wound is granulating just fine which means it is healing. He doesn't want her on an antibiotic since that could cause a resistant infection. Better left alone so long as it continues as it is. Who knew being the mom to a 29 year old would mean nursing duties??