Woo-hoo!

For the first time yesterday, I entered UW Madison Hospital and left on the same day. Stitches are out, the x-rays look good, see you in a month. If they put that to music, I'd sing it. I was in and out in a couple hours and left behind me the enormous feeling of vulnerability I have been carrying around, most obviously since the second, "do over" surgery. The first hint of this, of course, came when I became involuntarily airborne. Details.

This is Walker's kindergarten graduation picture, one of my absolute favorites. He looks about as delighted as I feel. Give hugs.

Retractions, corrections, meas culpa

It's been a little while since I posted. This is actually good, I think. For one thing, this business of writing about one's self and how one feels all the time can be a bit much. This phase of healing shall be called "enough about me already!" I go to Madison today, tagging along with Geof and Isaac and Bee and they will remove my stitches. I do not anticipate they will keep me, and this is based on some semblance of actual experience, but the fear still lurks, hiding somewhere about mid-spine, that they will. Fear be damned, I am not packing extra.

I have found that working half time, or at least (so far) sitting at my work stating half time waiting for all the right components to show up so I can have a virtual private network, I can manage pretty well. I get sorer as the day progresses, but it's not unmanageable. In fact, it's more managable with reduced pain meds that do not make me feel stoned. You'd think a guy who used to work pretty hard to maintain a buzz would appreciate being stoned on pain meds, but there you go. I guess I like to CHOOSE.

The best and most amusing news has to do with the toilet paper and neighbor confrontation saga. Walker came home from cross country practice the other day with the news that it was HIS friends who had done the dirty deeds, and NOT Bryce, the much maligned neighbor boy. Robyn went over and confessed to the neighbors that they were innocent. I am proud of her. We learned a few things, too.

We learned that the neighbor lady who identified our innocent buddy is not so astute. We know that when things are out of control, identifying local criminals may not be the best diversionary activity. We learned never to discount the capacity of Walker's numbskull cross country team-mates. Ah, karma. Ran over my dogma again!

Think good thoughts. My plan last time was to get the outpatient stuff done and then have my first beer since the wreck. This is still the plan, I think. I hope. Please. It's time to move on. No do overs. Really. I have not pushed limits, I have endured Minerva's determined embrace, I have taken my pills and learned to eat smaller portions, chewing thoroughly. In honor of our old friend Frank, I have glued purple feather to my bum and danced suggestively in the back yard moonlight.

I may continue that one. It was kind of fun.

It's recycled but I like it.

I won't say which friend described me very gently as "pouty" (but her initials are Dede!). Scared is what I was. I don't like to think of myself has helpless. Thinking that way makes for long nights. So what about this makes me different from anyone else?

So Robyn convinced me that trying to go cold turkey off pain meds wasn't sane and a nurse in Madison explained that both the antibiotics I am on make a person prone to nausea (which is you see also an indicator of increased infection) and the gently blunt Dede has offered her magic skills (and it must mean something that I'm going to take her up on this. I'm still uptight but I've been handled by so many strangers lately this'll be a pleasure, I know). A friend from work came by and caught me up. Brought me the chip I'll use to work from home next week. And so it starts to fit together.

If you page back a few weeks there'll be some doggerel about how I'm going to learn somehting meaningful from all this. True and low hanging fruit, that. You don't get to choose what you learn. That's the deal.

Walker's home!

Low

Here's a picture of young men eating after Caitlin's prom. Nice. They didn't get anything on their jackets (and, one hopes, on their dates).

I was very excited to get my wires out and my jaw loosened. I didn't count on my jaw getting used to being closed, or on my brace pushing my lower jaw up, keeping my head back. Ironically, my mouth is now NOT big enough. Chewing is strange because my teeth are not quite where they used to be. Close enough, but I'm not chewing on steak yet.

The endless "recovery" is what is getting to me. I get to thinking I'm feeling better and some test tells me maybe I'm not. It gets to the point that I feel like I can't trust my own perceptions. Am I feeling better or am I just telling myself that. Am a nauseous because I'm still infected by something or is it just the two antibiotics, the pain meds and a relatively empty stomach doing it? If I'm sleepy a lot, is that me healing, or my body telling me I'm not really okay?

The little hole in my back that has been a concern is very, very small and does not seem to really be infected. It's an enormously long scar and it makes sense that it all would not be "perfect." I talked to my boss and I'm going to telecommute part time next week, which will be great. I may try to go there and work as well, just to get a feel for how things will work. I told him it might mean that I end up sleeping for a little while on one of my sofas. He's okay with that kind of break. I'm lucky.

Although I'm not hungry enough, not busy enough, and don't have enough energy. I really do think I'm on the mend. Right now. I'm just incredibly, overwhelmingly tired of being in this process. I can usually will my way through most of life's events. Damn.

Worship is good.

I'm doing some worshiping right now. It's Sunday, after all. Throwing a little worship out your way if you checked in, helped out, offered to help out. Throwing a little good karma back at all of you good karma flingers. I don't have a lot of close family. This must be what that feels like.

We are feeling grateful for the outstanding array of talent, imagination, intelligence and humor you represent. And you appear to be on our side! How fortunate. This has been the first time since childhood when I really needed my people.

And you showed up. Thanks.

Amen.







Amongst the fellowship there has been some controversy. Some of you who have been following our lives through the facebook portal may be aware that we have been t p'd. Caitlin and Walker cleaned it up but really didn't feel as though anyone in their crowds would be doing this sort of thing.
Hey, I'm recovering from surgery! No one's asking me to clean up. Case closed, eh?

I went to bed about 10:00. I'm recuperating. The kids were still out back being good. I was tired. I fell asleep some time after 10:30 p.m. Caitlin came and woke me later to inform me that we'd been t p'd again. I responded "zmoprhg." I looked out, and my kids were cleaning up the mess again! My kids! Wow. Walker said "it's a lot easier now than when it get's dew on it." Wow.


As some of you may know, our neighborhood has some families who have been here a good long time, and we have some homes that are, well, cursed. They sit empty for a long period of time and then someone moves in who inevitably proves to be, well, shall we say further evidence in favor of the curse.

Jackie, who has been here as long as there was a development, lives across the street and is a lawn ranger. She mows twice on the diagonal. An avid mower, she will not let her grown sons mow. One of her sons spends hours and hours out front detailing hiw WR-X. Said twig unable to avoid proximity to well known tree. Jackie was up and saw our next door neighbor kid (from a cursed house) enthusiastically t p'ing our yard. She called Robyn, who was out with her friend, and Robyn called Caitlin. Caitlin went next door and rang the bell until the mother of the house came. Caitlin reported the youmg Bryce had t p'ed our yard, possibly for the second time, and she hoped that their household was now as awake and disturbed as ours was.

Moxie.

The mother said she'd "talk to" Bryce in the morning. However that goes, we have our neighborhood posse on the watch.

I'm smiling, goddammit.

I got a great shareware photo program called Gimp a while back. It lets me take a second look sometimes. In this case, I was poking through photos prior to deletion. We'd been looking at the brace shots in terms of the brace.

That's how I found the picture Robyn took that turned out to be a very lonely silhouette.

This might be an interesting one to turn black and white.





There. What do you think? I had to sharpen it up a little.

I have increasing amounts of energy and decreasing amounts of pain. I've not messed with the original pain dose for discharge. This was a step down from the hospital dose. I think another step down will be in order tomorrow. I'm hungry. As we all know, Tuesday is the day I get to eat again. I hope someone is telling my stomach. I'm trying to keep him busy.

There is still drainage in the bandage, although far less than in the last one. [Nancy, there is still yellow in the mix. Lots of clear and red tinged as well. ] Minerva constantly rides my back, reminding me that I must comply with the expectations of my healers. If this is really the range of motion I was supposed to have (last time), then I was really out of line. Yo. Because Minerva rides my back, I feel freer to move parts of me she does not control. The safe feeling of the law abiding citizen of an authoritarian regime.

Did I mention the wiring in my jaw comes out Tuesday morning? Dang! No worries after that. I'll eat myself back to good health.

We had a campus clean up day with the Braille School staff in Vinton a few weeks ago. We have a huge campus that we all enjoy and there are not enough hands for a good spring clean up without us. We trimmed 100 yards of hedge and in the process revealed a goldfinch nest with two live birdlets and an egg. The goldfinch is a lovely bird, our State Bird, and so the loss of this nest is, of course, a loss to the entire combined communities, Avian and Human. But I digress.

We lowered the nest into the bush farther, but some wily predators had been watching our work. Note to self: you are not as sneaky as a goldfinch. The nest was scattered. There was no sign of the finchlets. The egg sat here in the bush. I think it was already broken when the nest went down. The predators didn't bother with it. After you've had fresh finchlet, day-old eggs just don't cut it.

A number of people ask me whether I will continue to ride a bicycle. I was not really a bike fanatic. What I was doing was training for the BRMA ride. In my mind it was about not letting my physical conditioning exclude me from having fun with my friends. Riding that road trip was a personal fitness goal. If I could ride up long hills and travel 50 miles per day with my some of my best friends, it would be a pretty good start to the summer. I was looking at biking as another way to get the "run" in that I seem to need three times per week in order to stay reasonably trim and somewhat less crabby. Here's one reason I'd really like to get back on the bicycle:

I only could ever ride half way up the long hills before stopping. There the wind sings and the view is spectacular. It is a view of which one feels a peculiar ownership. Perhaps that's from grinding up this far.

I never thought much about the down hill portion, other than associating it with fun, gliding pleasure. I have a pretty nice old racing bike and high pressure tires and I'm a big guy. Downhill and momentum have been my friends.

I think it was the day before I wrecked that I clipped Chris's rear tire with my front one, in town, and ended up on my back with my bike beside me, on concrete.

Oh, I just can't imagine even being in that position now. Oh. I have to go the bathroom.

Long awaited Minerva Pictures and gross details about wounds

This is my second full day at home from the hospital. My basic medical goal is to seal up the wound on my back, thus demonstrating that the infection in my back is going or gone. The infection worked its way down the screws in my spine into the bone in my spine. This is osteomyelitis (someone is going to have to help with spelling). I started thinking: infection in bone close to spine. Yikes! The wound looked a little leakier yesterday, the first wound check since the big car ride back from Madison. I think the driving probably accounts for it but . . . it's also yellower. Who knows really? We took 36 hours to get to the bandage so there's no fair comparison over time and it's all subjective. I have no fever. I'm hungry as Hell. I have more energy and I have less pain than last time. My slow healing skin is asserting itself as an actual organ and is going to take it's own sweet time. Dr. George Mexicano at UW Infection Control is my new best friend. I'm making love to a bottle of Cipro. I have promised Robyn that I won't even think about reducing anything or increasing anything until Sunday.

Here are pictures of Minerva, my brace. She is beautiful in that she protects me.


I thought I had a casual expression on my face in these pictures. Hmmm. I'm going to work a little bit with the image on the left. I have many pixels to play with.














A lot of the time, being a patient in this medical system feels a lot like this:

















Aw! Great picture, though, eh? S.