This is new. I’m trying to write this letter under the influence of a couple of hits of Percocet while listening to the brilliantly talented and young David Garrett’s unique mash-ups of classical music and rock. I’m an instant fan.

Anywho, I had the surgery to repair my umbilical hernia yesterday. Since, I’m home writing this, everything went well. I was supposed to have the surgery at 12:45, but due to one delay after another. I wasn’t wheeled in until 3:30 – yeah you know the fun of waiting in a hospital right?

The good thing is since Mary works for the hospital; I had a private pre-op room to myself and just watched ‘Deadliest Catch’ waiting for my turn to get sliced up – which is another thing that changed.

The original procedure was supposed to be laparoscopic, but once they got a better look at the hole from which my intestines were sticking out, they realized it was bigger than first thought. So, they needed to do a direct access procedure to add a mesh over the hole to keep my guts from popping out.

This meant that instead of three small incisions they did one long one starting a couple of inches above my navel, through the bellybutton and about three more inches below that. Essentially a deep slash wound.

The good part is that they didn’t use external stitches or staples. They used DermaBond ® which means they Crazy-Glued my stomach together. The scaring will be minimal, so I can once again unabashedly take my shirt of in public places as I always do…uh, yeah.

They originally told me it would be 45-minute procedure. It took an hour-and-a-half.
I began to come to as they wheeled me into post-op, in time to here one nurse ask another, “How’d it go?” The other nurse said, “Oh he got a little wild when he went under and we were putting in the tube, but once we strapped him down everything went fine.” I don’t know exactly what I did and I’m thankful to have no memory of it.

Since I was pretty doped up, I didn’t feel any pain on my stomach, but my throat was killing me from that damned tube. Considering I hadn’t eating in 24 hours, I wasn’t hungry, but I was thirsty as hell. They gave me a toasted English muffin and cranberry juice. I had a few nibbles of the toast, but craved drink more than anything – the colder the better.

Even when we finally got home at 8pm, I was more interested in drink than food. Mary got vanilla ice cream and that really helped my achy throat.

My throat is still sore as I write this, but the pain from the incision trumps it now. I tried to deal as much as I could but getting up and down was a real pain, and I could only walk stopped over like the 1,000 year old man. So I relented and doped up. There’s still pain and discomfort but I can at least stand erect and think of other things other than pain.

Since I’m supposed to sit around and be a lump and not allowed to lift more than 10 pounds, I’ve been leaning on Sarah and Steve to help out and so far they’ve been great.

All in all It’s All Guud.