I'm sending out a search party...

[Patricia]

...with instructions to look for Andre and Sharon. Didn't Sharon post that she was returning home, and wasn't that days ago? As for Andre, I think he must be working hard on something and no longer has time for us.

[Katie]

Sharon's been on here today (on one of Kat's threads, I think), but I haven't seen Andre for quite a while. I hope it is that he's working hard.

[Patricia]

I missed Sharon, though I might have read her post and just missed noticing the name. I'm good at not being observant.

I asked Andre where he's been (this was quite a while ago) and he said he's catching up on his sleep. From seeing his picture, I know he doesn't need beauty sleep.

[Claudine]

Huh. Ja he's been pretty snowed under with work since Christmas and New Year. Which reminds me, I need to email him.

This search party, make sure they have the necessary things to survive. Like a large jar of marmite, some good booze and crackers. Oh and cheese. Lots of cheese.

[Andre Jute]

I'm just in hospital having arteries in my heart widened for another 40 years of good living.

[Margaret]

Andre,
Please take care and mend quickly. You and your voice are missed.

(You didn't perchance try that French Toast recipe, did you?)
Margie

[Katie]

What's with everyone having operations? It's just not the same around here.

Get fit and well very soon, Andre. We promise not to say anything bad about you while you're not here. Well...not too bad.

[Claudine]

Wow, get well soon Andre.

Which toast recipe?

[Andre Jute]

I'm not sick, folks, just a little overlived on the expense account.

[Claudine]

I nearly had one of those artery widening things. I was in bed for 2 days after. That was after spending the weekend writhing in pain from what turned out to be a bad acid reflux attack and not a heart attack like I though. Eish!

In the meantime...give em hell at the hospital if you are still there and keep living the good life on your expense account :)

[K.A.]

Take Care, Andre. Stay out of trouble...if you can.

Everyone here is down with the Kentucky Crud - except me, I had a flue shot, which means I don't get it. Oddly enough it's not the regular flue - just a nasty virus.

Took my best friend a huge container of chicken & dumplings for the crud - and my WIP to read.

[J.A.]

Be well, Andre.

[Patricia]

Ah, Andre, sorry to hear this. But glad you're up to posting to let us know why you've been so quiet. We'll try to keep the recipe posts more on the healthy side after this. Just hurry back to us, please.

Margie, let's redo the French toast recipe like so:

1/2 piece whole grain bread sliced thin and served toasted and dry. Top with the anti-cholesterol drug of your choice.

Kat, I get the shot, too. I had a bad bout of bronchitis last year but that's the only bug that got me in the past decade at least. It helps being a hermit, seldom around many people. In fact, just yesterday I was thinking of joining the Y, then decided against it because it's so busy and people could be carrying all manner of viruses into that place.

[K.A.]

Your immune system suffers when your a hermit.

when I was working in the treatment center - the clients caught every bug that went around. I used to hate going to see my parents. When they came to our place, I knew the dishes were washed in hot water. But at their place I was always worried I'd bring something in with me.

[Patricia]

I'm sure my immune system is lousy. If I wanted to boost it, I'd go to work in a daycare center. Instead, I live as much in a bubble as I can.

[K.A.]

Daycare will only expose you to the 'average' bug.

The exotic stuff is in the Rehabs. I've seen everything from AIDS to tuburculous.

[Patricia]

Thanks, anyway.

[Joo]

Rest up Andre and take care :D

[Margaret]

Patricia wrote: "I'm sure my immune system is lousy. If I wanted to boost it, I'd go to work in a daycare center. Instead, I live as much in a bubble as I can."

You can say that again. The first three years I worked in this elementary school I was sick as a dog winter after winter no matter what I did, now I can pretty much avoid whatever is going around but it is not easy when so many children are sent to school very sick. Now, I have to admit, when I get sick, I'm really sick.

[Andre Jute]

Thank you all for your good wishes sent during my rest cure. I came home yesterday, and that is only because there were complications during a single-day procedure which caused the surgeons to cover their asses by keeping me in a couple of days extra and subjecting me to all the tests in the book. (You want to know what the brain of a genius looks like, ask to see my MRI scans.) They and my family took a bad fright but I had a good laugh about it: their misunderstanding was due to asking me to follow a finger with my blind eye as a test of of whether I had recovered my brain functions... When I saw the neurologist clearly for the first time on the third day he still looked frightened...

It's amazing what they can do these days. After heart surgery, the only marks on me are two pinpricks, one on my wrist where they went in to the heart, and one in the elbow for taking blood (the hospital as an outpost of the vampire empire!) and for the drip rehydrating me while I was out of it. Well, okay, that's if we overlook the hair ripped off my chest by innumerable round stickers for test points to which they attached monitoring lines. At one stage I had so many of those things on me, I was covered in them.

In fact, I was awake for most of the procedure of putting a stint (a tube of high quality chicken wire made of titanium or stainless steel) in my heart, until my body reacted against the iodine they pump in to use as a contrast agent against which to see what they are doing, and I became disoriented. I had this iodine the previous time they rooted around in my heart and nothing happened; then I went home on the same day. Apparently one's body, if it will react, gives the iodine a pass once, remembers it, and then reacts the second time. I didn't think to ask what happens the third time; perhaps a fortunate oversight.

If I get hold of Murphy, he's due for a good kicking.

[Claudine]

I think you can die Andre if you are allergic and no one knows. I worked with a woman who was allergic to it. Her tongue and mouth swelled horribly one day before they rushed her off to the local ER.

Glad you are back home after all the fun.

[Patricia]

Only Andre can make heart surgery sound like a day at an amusement park.

So happy to hear you're back where you belong.

[Andre Jute]

This woman was allergic to iodine, Claudine? I wouldn't have known, as I didn't even know the contrast agent was iodine until afterwards. I thought it was heavy water, a bit radioactive, because it gives one these hot flushes... Anyway, this is the first time I've ever had a reaction to iodine, and I've had that stuff painted on me by the gallon in a life that hasn't always stayed clear of the sharp edges and the hard impacts.

I'm off to have a shower without several nurses trying to squeeze into the bathroom with me, claiming they're under strict orders not to let me out of their sight for a minute... "Ooh," one of them said the first time I stood up in the indelicate hospital gown, "the girls are going to be so envious of that tight bum."

[Claudine]

Ja she is very allergic. She found out about the allergy after applying betadine which contains iodine to an injury she had. She's extremely sensitive even to minute amounts in fish.

[Andre Jute]

That must ruin her pleasure in eating out.

[Patricia]

Andre, you're supposed to pull the slap closed when you stand up. But you're such a showoff, I'm sure you knew that and pretended not to.

[Andre Jute]

I don't think you understand the sort of hospital gown I'm talking about, Sierra. It is slit up the back and so skimpily made, you can't draw anything closed. There is no flap. I dumped it instantly and wore my usual jersey cloth lounging pyjamas.

[Patricia]

I do know. I've worn my share of them. I always slipped a second gown on, worn backwards like a robe. Not that I have a bum like yours to cover up. Nobody ever told me others would envy mine.

[K.A.]

I had a heart scare years ago - I wore 3 of the damn things because I was freezing!!

[Andre Jute]

It was pretty warm in my room. First I closed the window because a damp mist was rolling in. Then, with a room full of nurses hanging over my shoulders reading ROBUST on my phone, the temperature kept rising. I was thinking of going back to the *well-vented* hospital gown...

[K.A.]

lol - they were reading this over your shoulder?

Too funny.

[Katie]

It sounds as if you've been through a rough time, Andre, despite your humour. Glad to see you back on board. Stay well.

[Patricia]

I think he went to the hospital just to be with the nurses.

[Katie]

It seems a rather drastic way to get attention.

[Margaret]

I love reading our threads on Robust. So glad that you are home Andre. Take care one and all and I don't want to hear about any of you having to wear those overly ventilated gowns.

[K.A.]

Speaking of search parties - I've re-named the snobbery thread and asked Claudine to remove it.

[Claudine]

Done Kat.

Andre just likes all the attention. On another board where moms hang out and tell it like it is, he'd be called a drama queen ;)

Those hospital gowns are seriously unflattering.

[K.A.]

Sometimes I wonder why he even talks to us - we never give him a break.

[K.A.]

Oh - PS thanks for the favor.

We can carry on, now.

I promise to behave - for a few hours - while I'm sleeping.

[Andre Jute]

K. A. wrote: "Speaking of search parties - I've re-named the snobbery thread and asked Claudine to remove it."

Smart cookies, you and Claudine. I was just wondering if I would have to do it myself.

[Katie]

I really wouldn't have said anything - for her sake, not anyone here's.

[Patricia]

I think it's for her sake (and yours) that the disappearance happened.

[Katie]

Thank you.

[K.A.]

No problem.

[K.A.]

Andre Jute wrote: "Smart cookies, you and Claudine. I was just wondering if I would have to do it myself."

No problem.

Anyone smart enough to support our Katie is off the hook.

Send Dakota over there.

[Sharon]

Well, here I was in a jet-lag fog the like of which I have never experienced before, never dreaming anyone would be missing me (thanks Patricia), and there was our ROBUST leader doing his best to do otherwise but being anything but. For a few hours anyway, then unlike this lost soul was back up to snuff while my (probably not quite genius) brain could not seem to wrap itself around a lucid sentence.

My dd used to be a cardio-pulmonary tech and worked on several friends of mine who had stents put in - all of whom are feeling better than ever several years later, including my eldest bro. So I know it can be no big deal in the grand scheme of things, and yet it is a big deal and many things can go wrong. Like the rest of us I just assumed Andre was busy with his writing/editing work. Sorry to hear it was otherwise, that is scary.

Heal well, Andre, my thoughts and prayers are with you. May you have those 40 more years of good living and bright writing...

[Andre Jute]

Thanks. Sharon, everyone. Glad to hear you know so many people whose lives have been improved by a stent. For a while there I wondered if the promise would come true. But now I'm home, only a few days late, and everything seems great.

[Dakota]

Andre's a very hard case, very likely indestructible.