Scar Neck and Bottled Water

Today was a fun day.  Valerie and I were going to get together for a girl's day out, but at the last minute we decided to invite John along.  We all got salads and brought them to the park to eat, along with a game to play when we were done eating.  It was so sweltering hot that I left my sweater at home and we chose to sit under a pavillion for shade and started to dig into our fresh salads.  About ten minutes later it started pouring down rain.  No, it started storming.  Thunder and lightening.  And  it started coming in sideways into the pavillion.  We were getting soaked.  Our napkins and utensils were blowing away and worst of all we were just wet and freezing.  There was no way we were going to be able to make it back to the car.  And the storm just wouldn't stop.  Val and I huddled behind John and made him our shelter.  I wished I had my sweater.  Val asked John if he was wet, since we were wet and he was in front of us.  "No, just sprayed!" he said.  I knew he was underestimating.  Finally it stopped raining so much and we made a dash for the car.

We went back to my house and played the game.  I had protected it from the storm by wrapping it in one of the plastic bags we had gotten from the grocery store that the salad came in.  Otherwise it would have been no more.  We had a great afternoon having fun playing a game.  Valerie of course won, as she wins most word games.  John and I are always very close, but somehow she seems to always win, especially on Scrabble type games!  I forgot to mention, John went back out in the rain and got us chocolate chip cookies.  That is because he is and always will be the biggest sweetheart in the world!  He does just about anything for me, lol.

After we were done I looked at Val and noticed her neck had a little scar on it.  So I called her "Scar Neck"!  She took an open bottle of water and threw it at me.  Mind you she didn't throw the bottle at me, she just chugged the water through the air so that a huge amount landed on me.  Right in the house!  Then we both let out a huge amount of laughter!  I told my Mom later and she said that was not good what I did but my sister thought it was funny.  You see, what we both did broke the tension because we both have been through a lot lately and we had a big laugh out of it.  Maybe you would have had to been there but it was really funny.  We are close enough to know that each other meant no harm, and it really was hillarious. 

Speaking of Val's neck, she told me "I don't just have a scar, I have a tube (or whatever she called it) running through my neck."  She took my hand and placed it on her neck so I could feel it!  She showed me how it started at the top of her head in the ventricles of the brain (yes you can actually feel it in the head too) and how it comes down and goes down the jugular!  And then if I remember correctly it empties into an area in the heart!  It is called a v/a shunt.  At first she was going to have a v/p shunt but she has had to many surgeries and problems with her abdomen.  So they made the shunt end at her heart instead of her abdomen.  Well, I hope that wasn't too much information.  And I wish I could have explained it in more medical terms, but the site I wanted to go to has been discontinued and I am trying to explain it from memory, and probably very poorly at that.  

John and I got to spend a lot of time together and that was really nice.  We are going to go to Mass in the morning.