Zia Rosa

I forgot to mention that I accidentally on purpose turned an entire hospital floor into a literary awards committee.😏

While in the hospital, I recruited nurses, techs, therapists, cafeteria staff, housekeeping, and anyone else who wandered into my room to help judge our storytelling contest.

Some people recover by resting. I recover by holding mock literary tribunals over fictional cats.

Ladies and gentlemen... I proudly present the inaugural Thomas Tiramisù Premio Campiellopaws Storyteller Award. 🏆🐈🇮🇹

www.facebook.com/share/p/198fiVyAJA/?mibextid=wwXIfr

🍳🇮🇹 RECOVERY UPDATE🇮🇹🍳

HOME. ❤️ Or at least the first stop on the way there.

Last night, just after 5:00pm, I left the hospital after a week, two surgeries, and more coffee than any medical professional would officially recommend.

Sarah took this photo on my way out. The flowers are covering my face because after a week in the hospital, I felt it was best to leave a little mystery in the world.

And this morning, at 3:44 am, for the first time in a long time, I find myself feeling something I wasn't expecting.

Peace.

Not because everything is perfect. Not because all the hard things magically disappeared. Not because there aren't still chapters left to write. But because I've been reminded, over and over again, that I am not walking through any of this alone.

I have friends that have become family who opened their home and their hearts to me without hesitation, and their beautiful daughters have already brought so much joy into my recovery. They each made me the sweetest get-well cards imaginable. I think that's going to be one of my favorite memories from this entire experience.
Maddy wrote a description of me using the letters of my name … And somewhere in her imagination she categorized me as “Obviously a diva” when she got to “O” . 🤣💄 Which, if we’re being honest, is a pretty accurate assessment.

Then, at approximately 4:17:a.m., unable to sleep, I did what any reasonable recovering patient would do…I ordered groceries.

Not because I necessarily needed anything; I think I was just overwhelmed by how loved I felt.
After a week in the hospital, after two surgeries, after all the prayers, messages, flowers, cards, visits, coffee deliveries, and kindness, my brain simply refused to shut off.

So naturally, I made a grocery list.
As one does.

By the first light of day, I had decided I was going upstairs and making breakfast for anyone willing to eat it. Now, for context, I'm staying in the basement.

And when I say basement, I don't mean basement. I mean a beautiful space that's probably larger than my apartment, with gorgeous views, full kitchen, private bedroom and bathroom…all the amenities. However, that meant I had to climb all those stairs to get to the kitchen.

Sarah looked at me like I had completely lost my mind. In fairness, she may have had a point.

But something was calling me upstairs. Not because I needed to cook. Because I needed to feel like myself again. So there I was, standing in the kitchen making my newest breakfast creation:

🌅 L'Alba di Zia Rosa 🌅

Made with sourdough bread, eggs, cheddar cheese, roasted red peppers, ham, butter, olive oil, and a basil-infused dipping sauce. Officially translated as …"Zia Rosa's Sunrise."

My Nonna made a version of this for me when I was a little girl…"Eggs in Purgatory” she called it.

As I cracked eggs, chopped basil, drizzled olive oil into the pan, and fussed over making everything look just right, life was happening all around me. Coffee was brewing. The girls were talking about their day. There were conversations happening across the kitchen. And for the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn't watching life from the outside.
I was part of it. That's what I needed. Not breakfast. Not even cooking.

Connection.

Then came my favorite moment.
I watched Meghan take the first bite. Then I heard…"Mom, you've got to try this." 🍳 ❤️

Sarah took a bite and immediately said…
"Oh my gosh, this is actually really tasty."
And I cannot adequately explain what that felt like.

I write for a living. Finding words is literally my job. But I don't have words for that moment.

But cooking…Cooking I can always do.

And maybe that's why standing in front of that stove felt so important. For a little while, I wasn't recovering from surgery.
I wasn't counting medications.
I wasn't tracking steps. I wasn't a patient. I was just making breakfast, feeding people I love.

And honestly, that may have been the best medicine I've had all week. ❤️🌹

And yes, it’s been brought to my attention that most people get discharged and celebrate by taking a nap. Apparently, I
celebrated by launching a culinary comeback tour. 🇮🇹👩🏻‍🍳

🚨🇮🇹 BREAKING NEWS FROM THE THIRD FLOOR 🇮🇹🚨

After several days of extensive medical treatment, countless nerve complaints, and what can only be described as a suspicious amount of kindness from hospital staff, I am officially being released into the wild this evening. The situation has escalated considerably.

Sage from the cafeteria, apparently concerned about the emotional well-being of the hospital's resident Italian, arrived with an extra Luigi's Italian Ice and additional fruit, just now. He affectionately calls me ‘the diva’ and I must admit, the moniker fits.😘

Maya, one of the nurse assistants, appeared with fresh coffee in the middle of the afternoon, despite there being absolutely no medical necessity for such behavior or even my asking. ☕️

Nicole's beautiful flowers continue to brighten my room. 🌹

Meanwhile, The Sauce Boss arrived earlier carrying one of Bertolone's famous strawberry cakes for the nurses, who immediately began questioning whether she was accepting applications for adoption. 🍓 The staff has been so wonderful that I'm beginning to suspect they're trying to convince me to stay.

Unfortunately for them, my discharge has been approved for 5:pm this evening. I'll be spending a few days recovering with Tom and Sarah before finally heading home.

To everyone who has prayed, checked on me, sent messages, brought treats, flowers, coffee, laughter, and encouragement...

Thank you. More than you know.

I have a longer than usual recovery ahead of me, since there were two surgeries back to back… but if I behave, I’m told I’ll be good as new in 9-12 weeks. Now if you'll excuse me, I must get ready for my date with freedom, a comfortable pillow, and a complete absence of hospital gowns.

~ Zia Rosa 🌹
Director of Cafeteria Diplomacy & Unsolicited Kindness

🚨☕ OFFICIAL RECOVERY UPDATE ☕🚨

This morning, Physical Therapist Eric arrived with what can only be described as unreasonable expectations. Apparently, he wanted me to walk the hallway.
And then he wanted me to do stairs. 😳

Now, I may have recently undergone my second back surgery in five days, but I was not born yesterday. Before agreeing to these terms, I requested clarification regarding compensation.

Specifically…

☕ Fresh coffee from the nurse's station
☕ ❌Not the cafeteria coffee
☕ A second cup if circumstances warranted

After careful negotiations, while standing still and refusing to take even one step, an agreement was reached.

I then proceeded to:

✅ Walk the entire hallway
✅ Reach the end of the hallway
✅ Return from the end of the hallway….

✅ CLIMB STAIRS … up & down!

✅ Do all of this WITHOUT a walker!

Did I move quickly…Nope.

I've witnessed intoxicated Italian uncles at family weddings achieve greater speeds. I’ve seen Edgar water my basil and flowers with more gusto (barely)…But speed was never the objective.

Coffee was. ☕️

Upon successful completion of the mission, I returned to my room where breakfast arrived approximately three seconds later.

At this point, I would like the record to reflect that the cafeteria gentleman greeted me by saying… "Don't worry, Rosa, there’s no pasta or salad today."
Apparently my reputation now extends beyond my medical chart.😏

The attached photo contains evidence of the negotiated settlement, including two cups of coffee and enough sugar packets to concern several medical professionals.

So, my medical records should now include my previously agreed upon and updated Geneva Convention of Sicilian Recovery Efforts, that include a fresh cup of coffee ☕ A second cup of coffee ☕ Unlimited sugar packets

And somewhere in the distance, a physical therapist named Eric is probably filling out paperwork that simply says…

“Patient appears to be powered entirely by caffeine, stubbornness, and Sicilian spite.”

‼️Current status: Recovering well.‼️

It may just be another Tuesday morning for you, but before Physical Therapy arrived, I had already been awake since 4:30 a.m. conducting highly important research regarding trellis systems for the rapidly expanding grapevine growing outside the restaurant. Bertolone's

At this point, Montepulciano has become far too ambitious for its current living arrangements and requires additional infrastructure.

Some patients focus exclusively on recovery. I, apparently, am managing an agricultural expansion project from a hospital bed, while also winning arguments and seriously considering additional stair-related activities if further coffee incentives are offered.

~ Zia Rosa 🌹
Union Representative for Post-Operative Italians🇮🇹
Reporting live from a hospital recliner where I am somehow recovering from surgery, negotiating coffee contracts, and procuring a trellis for a grapevine named Montepulciano.

🚨🍇OFFICIAL HOSPITAL UPDATE 🍇🚨

Good news.

It turns out I was not, in fact, being dramatic. (Shocker, I know.)

During today's surgery, the surgeon discovered another fragment pressing on the nerves, removed it, and confirmed that my nerves are severely swollen, angry, and apparently of Mediterranean descent.

So for everyone keeping score at home:

Zia Rosa: 1

Existential self-doubt: 0

The doctors expect that swelling to calm down, but it may take a little longer than usual because these nerves are committed to the drama.

The best news….I'm expected to make a full recovery and return to baseline.

The less exciting news…for the next three months I am not allowed to lift anything over five pounds. Which now makes a family-sized pan of lasagna a workplace hazard.

I don't have a discharge date yet, but hopefully I'll be heading home sometime late tomorrow or Wednesday. For now, I'm back in my room, resting, behaving myself (😏), and enjoying what may have been the greatest chicken salad croissant sandwich ever served to a woman who has spent nearly a week in a hospital.

Most importantly, thank you. The messages, prayers, good thoughts, candles, kind words, and support that somehow traveled across multiple states and time zones have meant more than I can possibly explain.

Today, I'm smiling for two reasons.
One, my spine is going to be okay.
And two, The Sauce Boss stopped by before heading home to take care of her family, and made me smile, laugh and look forward to our next chapter in life. Some people arrive in your life and become friends. Others show up and somehow become family.

You know who you are. ❤️

Oh, and Sarah brought me red grapes.🍇 Unfortunately, hospital policy continues to frown upon my plan to convert them into a respectable Sicilian red. So, after careful consideration, I've agreed to take the pill version instead.

The doctors repaired my spine.
The nurses repaired my blood pressure.The grapes are doing what they can.

Thank you to everyone who has prayed, checked in, sent messages, brought snacks, visited, and generally kept me from becoming completely feral during my extended stay.

In the meantime, I will be resting, healing, and continuing to evaluate all fruit for its winemaking potential.

🍇🇮🇹❤️~ Zia Rosa
Director of Public Relations, Grape Inspection Services, and Pharmaceutical Wine Substitution

🚨🍝 OFFICIAL HOSPITAL UPDATE 🍝🚨

Due to ongoing negotiations between my spine and modern medicine, I have been relocated to the Pre-Op Division of Bertolone’s International Headquarters.

Medical staff continue to insist this is a hospital. At this time, I remain unconvinced.🤨

Current conditions include:
• One hospital bed
• Two stylish grippy socks
• Zero dignity
• Several nurses who have now been forced to hear entirely too much about our basil situation. 🪴

So, now I wait in this pre-op holding area….The Sauce Boss has been notified.

🇮🇹🍝😂

~ Zia Rosa
Reporting Live from an Undisclosed Medical Facility
and Still Somehow Working

Oh my heart …❤️🥹❤️

Please send my dear Rosa your thoughts, love, light, prayers, good wishes, positive energy, and whatever else you have available.

Fifteen laps around your Zia Carmelina’s rosary beads.

A novena.

Light a candle to Saint Anselmo.

And perhaps a special petition to the Patron Saint of Bad Hospital Food that she may receive a dinner tomorrow significantly more dignified than whatever crime against lettuce was served to her today.

But seriously.

Seriamente. 😐

If you’re inclined, please say a little prayer for Rosa as she undergoes yet another spinal surgery tomorrow.

This makes seven or eight at this point.

Cue Rosa to correct me because she keeps better records than the Vatican.

She is missed around here.

The flowers on the tables are beginning to look suspiciously neglected.

Edgar claims he is watering them, but frankly they look like he’s rationing moisture as though he’s filling the vases with Chianti instead of water.

The customers have started asking questions.

The flowers have started filing complaints.

So if you have a moment tomorrow, keep Rosa in your thoughts.

We love her dearly and look forward to having her back where she belongs—complaining professionally, making us laugh, and conducting investigations into ranch dressing and other threats to civilized society.

🇮🇹❤️🌹

— The Sauce Boss
Zia Rosa

I would like everyone to know that if Monday’s surgery goes badly, these photographs may become part of my official legacy.

Imagine being Italian/Sicilian.

Imagine surviving six spinal surgeries. Imagine surviving family drama that should have qualified for its own Netflix series.

Only to arrive at the possible end of your journey and discover that your second-to-last meal on Earth is…

…A bowl of lettuce suffering from clinical depression since the Reagan Administration. A packet of ranch dressing. And pasta that looks like it was prepared by someone whose only exposure to Italian cuisine was accidentally walking past an Olive Garden in 1997.

The ranch is what hurts the most.
Not because it’s ranch. Because they looked at that pasta, then they looked at that salad. And they said…

“Yes. This woman appears to be fighting for the use of her right leg. Let’s finish her off with ranch and questionable pasta.”

The lettuce itself appears to have been assembled under witness protection.

No tomatoes. No croutons. No parmesan. No cucumber. No ambition. Just leaves.

Leaves and regret.

I have seen more vibrant greenery in a cemetery.

And the pasta…Sweet Mother of San Gennaro.

That sauce has all the passion of a corporate training video. Somewhere in Italy, one of my ancestors just sat upright and doesn’t know why.

🇮🇹🤌🏽🇮🇹🤌🏽

At this point, I can only assume this is karmic retribution for something I did in a previous life.

Perhaps I was a Roman senator who voted against olive oil.

What if in Ancient Rome I diluted the wine?!? Repeatedly. For profit.

And now the gods have finally caught up with me.

Perhaps I was a Prohibition-era bootlegger who smuggled counterfeit Chianti in coffee tins.

And then somewhere in the great beyond, several offended Italian grandfathers formed a committee.
And now this committee is now in charge of my hospital menu.

I don’t know.

But whatever I did, I am sorry.
I have learned my lesson.

🇮🇹🤌🏽🇮🇹🤌🏽

Should Monday not go according to plan, I need everyone to understand that my final request is NOT flowers.

Do not send flowers.

Find whoever approved ranch dressing for an Italian meal and make them explain themselves in front of a panel consisting entirely of Italian grandmothers…. And The Sauce Boss.

I want answers. I want accountability.
I want tomatoes.

And if I survive this surgery, which I fully intend to do, there will be consequences.

Respectfully,

Zia Rosa❤️🇮🇹🌹
Currently Accepting Love, Light,
and Smuggled Parmesan
Running Entirely on Morphine, Spite,
and the Memory of Fabulous Meals at Bertolone's🇮🇹😂🍝

Notes From a Hospital Suite ✍🏼🩺

A curious thing happens when you're lying in a hospital bed long enough.

You start to realize there is a difference between people who are barely doing their job and people who are paying attention.

This week I learned that I was apparently drinking fluids just fine. No I was not. But, according to my chart, I was.

The only problem was that nobody had asked me why I wasn't drinking.
The answer was simple. I was afraid.

Not of the surgery. Not of the pain.

I was afraid that every sip of water meant another trip to the bathroom, and every trip to the bathroom felt like trying to cross a minefield with a broken leg.

So I stopped drinking. Not because I wanted to, but because it seemed easier.

Then last night a nurse named Ashley walked into my room and she
did something surprisingly rare. She paid attention. She read my chart. All of it.

Then she read between the lines.

Within an hour I had IV fluids running (they were ordered two days ago, nobody bothered to hook me up), a better plan for managing my pain, and someone advocating for me as though I'd been her patient for years instead of hours.

And it made me realize something.

The people who change your life are not always the people you've known the longest. Sometimes they're the ones who quietly notice what everyone else missed.

I've spent a lot of years grieving the family I wished I'd had. But this week I've been thinking about the family I've found instead.

Tom and Sarah have spent the week bringing me snacks, specifically, red grapes; they brought me my laptop, provided witty conversation, they check on my cats every day, and somehow are keeping an entire collection of plants alive.

This last task is particularly impressive because Sarah and gardening have historically preferred to admire one another from a safe distance. Yet somehow, my basil and tomatoes remain among the living.

Then there's Sonia.

The woman who showed up at four o'clock in the morning to take me to my surgery.

The woman who somehow knows exactly when I need laughter, exactly when I need a hug and exactly when I need a Tiramisu Martini. (No, she hasn’t smuggled one into the hospital… yet.😏)

The woman who walked into my hospital room carrying two pieces of fine china from a collection she loves and treasures herself, then handed them to me as though she were simply passing the salt.

I cried. Not because of what they cost, but because of what they meant.

The older I get, the more I'm convinced that the greatest gifts are rarely things. They're reminders.

Reminders that someone sees you.

Reminders that someone thought of you when you weren't in the room.
Reminders that you matter.

There have been visits, surprise text messages, a cousin checking in from two time zones away, inappropriate laughter, and enough support to make a hospital room feel a little less lonely.

And maybe that's what family really is.

Not necessarily the people who share your DNA. The people who show up.

The people who carry part of the weight when you're struggling to carry your own. The people who make sure you aren't facing hard things alone.

Sometimes family is inherited.
Sometimes family is chosen.

And sometimes, if you're very fortunate, it's found waiting for you at a table you didn't know had a place set for you.

Con affetto,

The woman who, while recovering from surgery, and preparing for a second one, is simultaneously building a page, designing a cover photo, marketing Bertolone’s, worrying about her basil, spying on her cats on the ‘Kitty Cam’ and writing essays about human nature. 🌹☕🍇🇮🇹

~❤️Zia Rosa

The Sauce Boss

Today's agenda….

• Another MRI
• More conversations with surgeons 🥼
• Discovering that walking remains a surprisingly ambitious goal;
• Learning I may be making a return appearance in the operating room Monday morning. 😢

So naturally, I returned to my room wondering what challenge awaited me next. The answer was apparently... this.

Now listen.

I understand this is a hospital.
I understand there are dietary restrictions. I understand there are budgets.

What I do not understand is how an Italian woman who works at an Italian restaurant was served this and expected not to have questions.

Did they not see all the vowels in my name? How exactly did they think this was going to go?😩

I've examined the evidence carefully… The sauce appears to have come from a can that doesn't expire until 2033; I'm fairly certain it could also be used to patch drywall.

There is no visible basil or oregano. 🌿 Garlic appears to have been consulted but not invited.

The rest of this meal is currently being investigated by The Sauce Boss and several concerned members of the Italian community.

Madonna mia... e io che pensavo che l'intervento fosse la parte difficile!
Zia Rosa 🍝 🤕🩺

P.S. If I disappear before Monday's surgery, tell the authorities to start with the marinara.