The original surgery was scheduled for Tuesday morning. I was out, and awake in ICU when they discovered I was still bleeding and they wheeled me back into the O.R. for a second surgery, and installing a second drainage tube. And the nasal feeding tube was in place several days longer than it should have been, so when it was finally extracted, there was some scratching and tearing of the lining of the throat. This led to what they suspect was some sort of thrush, and this in turn led to my taste buds being all sorts of wrong so that everything tasted bad. And, of course, I wasn’t able to bring myself to consume things that tasted like shit, so I wasn’t really eating much. When I got home I made a cup of coffee that I knew would taste just like coffee should taste. I was mistaken.

There were so many layers of problems that I was not warned about. But now I am home and I can hibernate into my own safe space. Having desecrated my chest with a razor, the delivered a scar from just below the sternum all the way down 3or 4 inches below the waistline. They warned me to tuck a slip of gauze under the waistline elastic to avoid chaffing the scar.

There will be a Home Health person coming 3 times a week to assist with meds and to make sure I’m doing various appropriate exercises. But for the most part the position shown above is pretty much how I will be for the next month or two, doing very little of anything. All of the doctors and nurses drilled it into me that I cannot lift more than 5 pounds or apply any sort of pressure. While the scar may appear to heal, the layers underneath can continue to split and then create a massive hernia. This would not be a good thing at all.

More than one person suggested I should let the scar heal and then get one of those zipper tattoos. Nope. No way. I don’t do tattoos.

It is now later into the evening, and I’ve taken a pain pill along with my regular evening meds. Not sure if I’ll make it into bed, or just veg-out here on the couch. My wake-sleep cycle for the last 9 days has been so fucked up it is silly to even call it a ‘cycle’.

I have a lot of things to write about about, but not for tonight.