The monogamy of marriage

Last Wednesday I had a procedure to fix some serious sinus issues I've been dealing with for 8 months. The recovery period is still ongoing with the stints scheduled to be removed on Tuesday morning at 8.30am.

Everything went according to plan and as this is day 4 and I am indeed feeling a marked improvement over day 1, 2 and 3 it would seem the surgeon does indeed know what he is talking about. I will continue to convalesce the remainder of tonight and all day tomorrow and hope to be back on my feet by Tuesday afternoon and, God Willing, by Wednesday I'll be ready to face the world again and interact with it's inhabitants.

I was wondering if I could manage anything more profound than a health update for the blog after a week long silence when I realized that the only person I've spent serious time with during the past 4 days has been my wife. My sister-in-law dropped by briefly to pick up our car to hep with her moving in to her new house but it was brief and I was hardly very communicative.

When you have a gauze taped to your face to catch the bleeding from your nose and you are barely coherent due to pain meds and post surgery recovery there really isn't any one you want to talk to other than your spouse.

"In sickness and in Health" is a quaint little ditty that is easy to skip over on the wedding day and thereafter, until you need someone to hold your hand while you have a short panic attack because you are finding it difficult to breath, or when you haven't slept in three days and have to take a sip of water almost every five minutes during those three nights, at times like these, then you are desperately glad of those five little words that are attached to the wedding service.

My darling wife has patiently nursed me during my recovery, as I generally don't do well with general anesthetic. Fortunately an entire anesthesiologist department worked wonders and so this time the nausea, and some of the other unpleasant reactions were thankfully absent from this recovery period. I'm grateful for  that as normal reactions are hardly pleasant. But they are more tolerable.

So it is tonight that I am in the frame of mind to wax lyrical about the wonders of a faithful wife and a happy marriage.

The ancient royal already described the perfect wife in detail in the conclusion of the Book Of Wisdom. I find it interesting that the conclusion to the book of wisdom is what a great wife looks like. But I digress...

My Bethany is the epitome of that perfection in the demonstration of wifely attributes.

For three nights I found sleep elusive, and exhaustion debilitating but as I'd fall back onto my elevated mattress and pillow I'd look across and see her sleeping beside me I'd feel the world was at least in the right orbit.

There is little of Hollywood's romantic interlude about helping your husband ensure he effectively rinses his sinuses out with post-surgery cleansers that help ease the bleeding and induce healing.

Or the moments when she would seek out the gap in the gauze so she could kiss a part of my face that wasn't either too sensitive to touch or too covered by medical gauze and tape to reach.

Then came the point when she gave me a scolding for using my first-aid kit's antibacterial cream for the sores on my face caused by the abrasive surgical tape. I wasn't to hurt my skin with such strong cream, she then anointed me with her own balm that did indeed prove to be much less stringent than my hiking kit's cream.

The reason why I think marriages are meant to be monogamist is that i can't imagine how anyone could offer this level of intense love to more than one person.

I am happily married to a dream come true. My darling did indeed fall out of a Disney Movie, she is indeed one of those awesome women who are the true heroines in every great story.

My wife is The Bethany, Herself, Herself, for there is no other......