Is there a single movie you’ve seen more times than The Wizard of Oz, not me or Suzanne? Who didn’t wait every year to watch that movie when it played? During our annual trip to the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, we decided to change our focus one day. The Wizard of Oz was playing at ‘The Sphere,’ and we heard so much about it that we bought tickets.

If you’re not familiar with The Sphere in Vegas, imagine sitting inside a giant basketball, and the movie screen is the entire ball. I remember going to Disney, and they had the 360 screen that was all around you as you stood and watched someone walk toward you, and then you turned around and watched them walk away. It’s not like that at all. It’s more like a virtual world where you watch the movie facing forward, but you are immersed in the movie.

It truly was amazing and hard to explain. The movie came to life like never before as you sang the songs and walked the yellow brick road. When the tornado hit, the wind blew your hair, leaves hit your face, and your seat rumbled with each strike of lightning; when the apple trees threw apples at Dorothy and the others, cloth apples fell from the ceiling; and when it snowed in the poppy field to wake Dorothy up, you guessed it, it snowed in The Sphere. An experience we both won’t forget.

Home from Vegas and back to reality: the holidays with the kids, Justin home for 3 weeks, and to conclude it all, in this first week of the new year, Suzanne had a colonoscopy. At this point, you may be wondering where this is all going. Hold on, I’m getting there.

As part of her procedure, the hospital had us fill out all the preregistration questionnaires online. Since I pretty much manage that side of her care, I logged in and answered the questions I thought they needed to know with more unanswered than not. When I got to the part of the questionnaire where I had to confirm her previous surgeries, I about fell out of my chair. In the place where it should have said ‘Lower Left Lobectomy of the Lung’, it read “Lobectomy of the Brain.” I couldn’t stop laughing. You mean I’ve been right all along?

I called our local doctor’s office and was still laughing as I tried to explain what I was reading. They couldn’t help and asked me to call the surgeon’s office. Still laughing, they couldn’t help me make the necessary corrections either and told me to call tech support. I thought, great, they’re probably going to ask me if it’s plunged in / the computer, not her brain. Forty five minutes later, our conversation ended with little if no success.

Now comes the day of her procedure, where we alerted registration of the error, who, of course, informed us they will pass it on to someone. On to pre-op, with a flurry of people helping, poking & prodding. Then, just as I expected, the anesthesiologist was looking through all her paperwork and asked, “What exactly was the brain surgery she had?” At that, we both laughed.

The best part of all this has been Suzanne and her reaction. She has had more fun with this as she dances around the house, arms extended out to the side with limp wrists, humming and singing ‘If I only had a brain.’ Something goes a little awry, spills a glass, drops a fork, up go the arms, a tilt to the head, and she starts humming that tune. So, for the rest of my life, she now has an irrevocable excuse for anything she does.

You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.

Acts 12:15