Hey! I have my 3-month update with my surgeon on Tuesday. We'll be hopefully reviewing my movement restrictions and getting the final all-clear to return to work at the beginning of next month. I don't expect that I'll be able to lift Leif, but even if I can twist and bend a little bit and reach out with both my arms at once it would be a huge improvement for me.

Do any of you have any questions? I'm going to ask for some clarification on the photo that I posted before (and hopefully will get another one). But if there's anything that other people want to know, I'll ask as much as I can.

Yesterday my wife's (Angie) father's (Ernie) wife's (Janet) mother (Lydia) died from a heart attack. I've only met her a few times, so I'm not really shaken by it, but she was a really nice lady. Something I think about is that with Janet marrying into the family after Angie and her siblings had all moved out means that there's a large chunk of Leif's family now that Angie and I can't really teach him about. So, I worry about Henry, and I'm thinking a lot about Janet. Since we're going up to Vancouver at the end of the week, we should hopefully be in town for any memorial service.

It's crazy to think back over the past 3 months. Various family members health problems; Leif learning to walk, and getting his first words; Leif moving to his own room and his own bed; Going from where I needed a walker and a trip to the mailbox was far, to where a ~1km to a park pushing a stroller makes me tired, but I can do the trip back easily enough; Going through the work to change to a new work visa; almost completing one of my master's courses; and importantly: I've got 30 of the songs finished on "Hard" in Guitar Hero 2.

It'll be fun to get back to work and regular life, though. =)

One of the proudest moments I had as a Canadian was sitting in the Senate visitor's gallery watching the debates on same-sex marriage that led to the full legalisation in Canada. In coming down to the US for work, I was sad to come to a place that not only didn't allow it, but had actually had a number of ballots in states voting specifically that the marriage referred to "One Man, One Woman".

I found a transcription of the Hansard of Prime Minister Paul Martin's introduction of Bill C-38 (The Civil Marriage Act). The logic in there for why Canada needed to legalise same-sex marriage is quite specific to Canada, but he talks about why it's important for the issue not to come to a vote:

The Charter was enshrined to ensure that the rights of minorities are not subjected, are never subjected, to the will of the majority. The rights of Canadians who belong to a minority group must always be protected by virtue of their status as citizens, regardless of their numbers. These rights must never be left vulnerable to the impulses of the majority.

I don't really understand the US system of rights. I hope that the protection of the right to love another consenting adult and make a commitment to them becomes the law of the land throughout the United States.

I love being married. I get the joy of being able to come home to my belle and share my day, spend time, and know that to the best of our ability, we're going to try to grow old together. I'm so happy that this ruling has come down and that in California the debate is now over.

As some people have guessed, not posting means that I'm doing quite well these days! The major advancements in my life since the last post are:

* Feeling comfortable enough to drive a car.

I finally feel like I can look around enough to shoulder check, although I can't twist enough to back the car up. When it comes time to park in out parking spot, I get Angie to do that bit.

* I'm allowed in the hot tub!

While this one seems like less of a big deal, since sitting in a hot tub in mid-20 degree weather is a bit weird, it's one more thing to do when I'm at home, and really pleasant on my back and shoulder muscles.

* My first HIV test came back negative.

Yay blood transfusion. The doctors consider the risk to be so negligible that they don't actively recommend that people get tested. They do, however, make you sign scary paperwork. So in order to be a responsible partner, and not a hypocrite when I teach OWL, I'm getting tested. One more test at 3 months, one more at 6 months to go.

Otherwise, things are going well. Physical Therapy is continue to put me on harder weights and Therabands almost every week. I'm continuing to reduce my meds at one pill per week (So I think I might be able to have a "Yay, I've got a 5-year visa" celebratory drink when I can back!). I'm still taking the anti-nausea drugs almost every day, but hopefully as I get off the pain killers, that will be less of a problem.

Oh, and I got our Canadian taxes mailed off (yay!). Now if we can only get the accountant to get the US ones off...

We're going up to Vancouver soon. There'll be at least one party for Leif, please email me if you want info. When we get back, I'll be straight into work, so forgive me if I suddenly go silent for a few weeks. =)

Now, back to homework. A course started a month earlier than I thought it did. =(

Physio:
I got to do cardio last Friday! Yay! For the first time it feels like I'm doing *real* exercise. 5 minutes on the elliptical and 10 on the bike. I've also gone from the yellow theraband to the red one on all my exercises. I've got another month at three times a week, and still every visit I'm coming away so much improved. The physio also mentioned that she's been going easy on me because until 8 weeks past the surgery, things aren't healed up enough to do real work. Well, we just passed 8 weeks, so I think tomorrow we'll be doing some actual weight training. We'll see how we go.

Techy stuff:
I'm hunting for something interesting to hack on. I've been digging a bit through the SoC lists, and I think I'm either going to just do a bunch of grunt janitor work on gcc, some hacking on eglibc to see if I can help make it small enough to seriously compete with uclibc, or I also emailed one of the Python folks who said that they were looking for an XMPP server written in Python 3.0. I got a cryptic reply of "Keep pinging me, I'll get some time eventually". So that might be a doomed project with people who don't actually care about the result. Too bad, I thought it might be a fun way to learn what's new in Py3k.

Other:
I've started going through and pruning back my friends list on Facebook. At first I friended pretty much anyone I'd ever met. I've come to use it to see how the people I care about in life are doing through their status updates, so I'm getting rid of people who's statuses I just don't care about. It seems kindof mean, but oh well. I'd really like the list to be made of people who, if they posted "I'm having a crappy day", I'd phone them up to chat with them and hear how things are going.

Leif's still cute. Angie's still sexy. Home life in that sense is pretty much the same as usual. We don't have people visiting us every weekend, but I'm well enough and we've gotten used to the shifted work loads that we're generally managing now. What we desperately need is a Roomba that will shampoo the carpets for around Leif's highchair. Ugh.

The local used bookstore actually has French kids books. Apparently the Barnes&Noble in Palo Alto also has a French section. So, we'll hopefully be able to teach Leif at least a little bit of French while we're on the opposite side of the continent. Yay!

I didn't get a picture of it, but the San Jose Mercury News ran a headline article today, "Life After Rape", and the sideline article beside it in big letters: "What's Next for Yahoo!?"

Hmmm...

Hey'all! Another update of the moment:

Physio is going amazingly well. I feel like my neck / shoulder mobility is close to what it was pre-surgery. My strength is still lagging behind, and I'm doing hefty 3 pound bicep curls! Woohoo! Not so much for my arms, but for my back, which still has to support my arms doing this. I'm also doing 45 pound dips, and some exercises with a yellow theraband. Walking is really tiring me out at all anymore, no matter what distance I walk. As I'm reducing my pain meds, I am starting to get sore, though. Hopefully in the next week that will stabilise. Next Monday I get an ultrasound of some internal organs (I can't remember which, sorry) that will see if I have a non-drug related cause for the ongoing nausea. But so far a pill every day or two seems to be keeping it at bay.

I've posted two more videos of Leif up on YouTube. I have a bunch to sift through, but hopefully there's at least one more good one in the set. I haven't uploaded the pictures yet because I hate f-spot so much. (Ask my sometime why I think it was called f-spot)

I got a fun chain letter from someone asking everyone to boycott Esso and Shell for the rest of the year to force gas prices to come back down the sub dollar-per-litre. This was my reply:

I like high gas prices, though. I want the prices to go much higher.

Every time the prices go up, there are more cyclists on the road, and
the air gets a bit clearer.

If it were $10/litre, then almost noone would drive. We'd all be on
bicycles. Then it we be so much safer to be on a bike.

I can't wait for the day.

What do y'all think?

And on the hacking front, I actually dusted off CVS and fixed some autotools bits in GNU Sysutils so that David could fix a compile bug. I don't know if this round of activity will spur us into doing more. But it's possible. So maybe in another.. Oh, I dunno. decade or so we'll have a full GNU replacement for util-linux that's portable and everything. =)

I might get off my ass and hack on my reimplementation of Galactic Bloodshed through the month of May. I miss that game in a strange pathetic way.

Heading into my last month of off-work recovery time, I'm surprised at how good I feel. I haven't replied to alot of emails I've gotten from folks, even from before the surgery. I'm starting to make headway on the emails, though. Thanks for your patience!

Hugs all!

For the curious, a picture from during my surgery:

(Warning, 1.7megs. (c) 2008 Dr. P Mummaneni, All Rights Reserved, posted with permission. Lots of blood and meat, you've been warned!)
https://sites.google.com/a/raspberryginger.com/public/surgery-stuff/DSC00585.JPG?attredirects=0

I have X-rays and MRIs and stuff to post later on. I'll get to those over the next couple weeks and post when I'm done.

Update: Apparently some people are clicking on the photo link, not being aware that surgery pictures means lots of meat and blood. I'm not sure what else people were expecting, but, yeah. There it is. As one person said, it looks a bit like a BBQ.

I started physiotherapy this past week. The first clinic I went to on Wednesday (Mountain View Physical Therapy) turned into an interesting disaster. When we walked into the place, the first impressions were that it was noisy and dirty. There was someone sitting upright in the waiting area asleep. The place is one big room, with the massage tables in the middle of the room and exercise equipment all around the outside. None of the staff looked really happy to be there. I met my therapist who, it turns out, is the director of the clinic. She was truly excellent - good enough that I would've overlooked everything else, except for the fact that she doesn't have 3 days a week free to see me. More weeks, I would've been lucky to get her more than once per week.

So for Friday, we found a different clinic. Orthosport. It was such a difference from the previous place, there's no good comparison. The receptionist was friendly, the therapist very professional, and the place really tidy. Even the assistants were very friendly and checked in on a regular basis.

But in between those two days, I got sick again. I had some sort of stomach flu or drug reaction the previous week, and it seemed to be coming back. After two days of throwing up, I made an appointment with the after-hours clinic today to get more anti-nausea drugs. They've also taken some more blood and want to do some tests next week to make sure that everything's still doing okay.

Another bit of love and affection goes to my new bank, RBC Centura. Not only have they done lovely things for bill payments, and sending money for free between my Canadian and American accounts, they also have a "Bank by Mail" program, where I can just stick cheques in an envelope that's already postage paid, and they deposit them for me. No need to find a machine of the right persuasion to do deposits. We still have a couple tasks to do before we can close out the HSBC account, but we're almost there.

Leif is pushing out new teeth. He'll be up to 9 when he's done.

Updates of the moment:

* I can put a t-shirt on now! About 3 days ago, I got brave and decided to give it a try. So, yay, no more zip up sweaters!

* Had my 6-week checkup yesterday, and everything is looking good. The incision is still a bit red and since my skin is so sensitive, the surgeon doesn't want me in the hottub for another 2 weeks. *pout*

* I started physiotherapy today. I can only give it a mixed review. The therapist was absolutely wonderful, it turns out that I got the clinic director. However, she doesn't actually have time to see me 3 days a week. Her schedule is so booked up that I'd be lucky to see her once a week. On top of that, the receptionists and assistants were not terribly professional (tending not to articulate, getting flustered, sort of tossing sheets of paper at me expecting me to know what to do with them), and the place was not clean. It was also in one big room, so the therapy is done in front of everyone else. Blech. So I have an appointment with a different clinic on Friday. Hopefully this one will go better.

* I don't think I've mentioned Leif recently. He's walking, can open the doors in the house now, and can clearly say "All Done". He also climbed onto my lap the other day and cuddled with me. So cute!

* Lastly, this is the end of the contest of "Guess the cost!" And the final total for the bill was.... $199,849.24. Our running total is of all things combined at UCSF is now somewhere around $280k, so I'm guessing the final total for everything will be around $300k when we're all said and done. Crazy. The closest guess was by runasand at $192,000, whoever you are. Linked-in says the winner is in Norway. So finding that vegan restaurant might be interesting. I still remember Debconf 3 in Norway when the caterer told me "In Norway, we have a special way of preparing vegetables... We feed them to the animals." And the meat-eaters begging the vegetarians who were going elsewhere for food for their meals so that they had something other than slabs of meat to eat.

I think because of this, I'm going to have to award the prize to mmmmtino in the meantime, who came in second place at $185k. That way I can pay it out hopefully within the next year. I'll still keep the other as a raincheque in case I happen to wind up in Norway sometime again. =)

Further on the OMG-This-medical-system-is-barbaric, It looks like the insurance company negotiates the hospital down in price, because they're in network. I've only seen the payout information for that one day overnight stay, but the insurance company will only be paying 10% of the cost. So if I didn't have insurance, I'd have to pay $67k. But the insurance company gets to pay around $7k. Do they charge so much because they don't make enough money when someone is insured? How does that all work?

So here's the latest update on how I'm doing:

* Got the stomach flu this week. After 3 days of being ill, went to the doctors and got anti-nausea, anti-diarrhea medication, and 400ccs of Saline by IV for the dehydration. Joy. I'm going to try to go off the anti-nausea drugs tomorrow to see if I'm keeping things down now.

* Leif swam for the first time. I didn't get video, but opted for some nice stills. I *will* actually upload the last 5 months of pictures sometime soon. Really.

* Found an accountant who knows what to do for Canadians who just moved here. Yay! US Taxes will get done!

* The incision has no redness around it at all anymore, which is way cool. On Tuesday, I go in for my 6-week checkup. I asked at the 4-week mark whether I could go in the hottub, and was told that they'd probably OK it at the 6-week mark. I start 6 weeks of physiotherapy the day after that.

* My stamina for walking seems largely back. I can walk to Safeway at a decent pace (I still have to rest when I'm there). I can get to the mailbox and back without a break now. The part that causes me grief still is the muscles on my left shoulders. I'll ask Angie which one it is. It's been more sore than the others since the beginning, but hopefully it's something the physio can help me sort out. If it weren't for that, I'd be cutting back the pain killers already. I still might do that when I know I have a 6-hour stretch of low activity.

* For lack of anything better to do, I've been playing with Eclipse. I rediscovered eclipse a year ago when I was working on the ConnectUU site. The PHP mode was surprisingly good and helpful, and I was quite productive in it. I tried shortly after that to use PyDev, and it did horrible things to eclipse. I've tried it again, and I'm enjoying doing a bit of Java coding (homework), and Python coding in it now. I may finally have found an environment in which I can be more productive than I was in vi.

* Ernie (Angie's dad) and Janet (his wife / one of Leif's Grandmothers) have been here for the weekend helping us clean up. Janet is an absolute whiz at organising things, and the kitchen is way more usable then it has been since we got here in November. I need to make sure that I send out thank-you cards to everyone who's come and helped us. Kit was here a couple of weekends ago. Heather was here last weekend. Leslie, Grant, Jim/Sarah, and Andrew/Sarah have each brought us food. Jamu and Sandy each came for longer periods right after the surgery. Having people come and help has made a huge difference to us keeping things together. Without outside help, I don't know how we would've managed.

I'm a day and a bit off of 6-weeks post-surgery. I'm feeling good.

During the surgery, the surgeons replaced two vertebrae with titanium cages. I hadn't a clue what that was, and they didn't have one handy to show me. I've managed to find a picture of one on the Internet, though:

http://www.medscape.com/content/2003/00/46/53/465370/art-nf465370.fig1.jpg

Cool, eh? On the next visit I'm going to ask them how they get the spinal cord to go through that, since I don't see any gaps to slide it through in the picture.

In other news, I can finally lift my laptop now, so chatting with people on jaber can be done at a reasonable speed without trashing by wrists from typing on the blackberry. Yay!

Also, Leif is definitely walking now. Craziness. I'll try to get some video soon.

... you type in "Barbapapa" in the YouTube search box to pass the time. =)

I've had a rough couple of days - it seems I've developed an intolerance to the pain meds that I was on. I went to the surgeon yesterday to see what we could do about the rash, the constant desire to throw up, and the complete aversion to eating.

I've switched meds now, and unlike at lunch when I went to work to go see some coworkers and I picked over half a bowl of soup, I've had a half-dozen pancakes and a half bowl of a rice-tofu-soyrizo dish that Angie made for dinner.

We're still tweaking the quantity and frequency of the meds (We started at 1 every 6 hours, and are now at 2 every 4 hours), but hopefully we've got it right now.

On the upside, the surgeon visit went very well. They like the way incision is healing, they took X-rays and everything seems good. I have a referral to a physical therapist now (Anyone know a good one around Mountain View?) and I'm permitted to start that in a week or two. My next follow up is at the 6-week mark, and the surgeon says that he'll probably clear me for sitting in the hottub then.

Yay, hottub!

My stamina continues to improve despite this - yesterday I managed a 4-block walk downhill, stopped for dinner, then a 4-block walk uphill again. If you've been to the UCSF medical centre, you'll know what I mean - everything is uphill or downhill from there. Today I went into the office and sorted out some more short term disability paperwork and some more banking paperwork. I'm feeling good about returning to work at the beginning of June.

So for those of you following along, you'll notice that I've just had surgery in the most expensive place in the world. Luckily for me, Google (my employer) has an amazing set of health care packages, so I haven't had to be concerned with total financial destruction.

But how close would it have come?

That's the game we're about to play! I invite you, dear reader, to make a bid on how much you think the 4 days in hospital including the surgery, will cost.

Here's some info to help you along:

* Two days and one night of angiogram, embolism, general anesthetic, and chapstick cost ~$67,000 (The stick of chapstick was $17, apparently. Gotta love itemised billing.)

* One day of prep to make sure that the above day wouldn't kill me was $750

* A friend of mine at a different hospital had aorta replacement surgery for $250,000. She apparently had a longer hospital stay and a longer surgery, but with fewer surgeons.

* I was in the hospital for 4 days.

* The surgery was ~7 hours long (We think they started at 11, they forgot to phone Angie when they started)

* There were at least 3 surgeons involved, plus physicians assistants, etc.

Winner gets one of (next time I see them, and assuming i'm physically able) one of (their choice):

* Back rub
* Reasonably good glass of nicest port available at reasonably-close-by bar (Let's say not to exceed $25 for the glass)
* Dinner at some vegan-friendly place.

Let the bidding begin! Bidding closes when I receive the bill.

Hey - here's an update:

* I'm off the steroids. Last one was last Friday, spent the weekend enjoying the withdrawal symptoms, and already enjoying the benefits, like my skin is clearing up even more, I'm starting to get my voice back, and I'm less inclined to be angry at the vacuum cleaner when it runs into me. Angie tells me I'm a lot more fun to have around. Which is encouraging when one is totally dependent on another person for food. =)

* I seem to have gotten sick. It took me a bit to figure this one out, but the withdrawal symptoms seemed to be going on longer than expected. Then Angie started showing signs of them, after Leif was fussy for a day. Blech. =( Which explains why I can be cold under covers when the thermostat claims that it's 74 F (No idea in civilised measurements, sorry). Hopefully this passes quickly. Time for lots of breathing and napping. Like I could be sleeping any more during the day.

* My energy levels are getting better. I saw Andrew Pollock at noon today when he returned a CD to me, and he commented that from my walking you can barely tell I had surgery 3 weeks ago. Except for how slowly I'm going. And the full body turn in order to look to see if cars are coming when I cross the road. And the huge production to step up onto the sidewalk. A 5 minute walk no long requires me to sleep for 2 hours. Can't say the same for a 10 minute walk yet, though.

* Staples are out! I have two more days of antibiotics because the incision is still red and giving off more heat than they'd like so I'm back in next Tuesday for another checkup. Last week, the surgeon wasn't surprised by the healing rate given that the steroids are an immunosuppressant, though. So hopefully next Tuesday I get a clean bill of health and then just have to wait 2 weeks before getting some movement restrictions lifted and starting PT. And tomorrow I'll have a shower without fetish^WPlastic Wrap all over the incision. I can't shower unassisted yet, though, since getting most of my body would count as "reaching"

* Short-term disability finally approved my claim. For 6 weeks anyway. Then they want me to return to work or get better justification from my surgeon. I'm sure he'll be all professional, but I'd love it if the letter read "My client takes 10 minutes to get out of bed. He takes vicodin every 4 hours, and my nurse just recommended Oxycodone so that he can sleep more than 2.5 hours at a stretch. What do you think?"

* We have the biopsy results. And like every other biopsy result, we have... Inconclusive! Whee! At least they're no longer using the word "Sarcoma", but instead have settled on Osteoblastoma. But there's a catch - there are two types of Osteoblastoma, Aggressive and not. (I'm sure there's technical terms, but I'm tired and didn't catch them). The inconclusive bit is whether it's aggressive or not. During surgery, however, they treated it as aggressive because they didn't have the information and did what they'd do to minimize the chance of it coming back by taking out lots of extra tissue. I still get to see an Oncologist, in case there's something interesting through all of this still to learn.

* Otherwise, schoolwork extensions are all approved, our new bank likes us and is doing good things. Coworkers are popping in and saying hi, so I'm not feeling totally isolated. Heinlein is less good the fewer drugs I'm on. Or maybe it's because I'm reading "Friday".

Things are still getting better every day, even through all the sickness and such. I'm trying to catch up with people on Jabber. I still can't lift the laptop, so IRCs out until I figure out where I put the charger to the N810. It's somewhere out of reach, so as far away as the moon as far as I'm concerned.

I also want to take a moment to say thanks to Sandy and Jamu for their visits here - We're trying to arrange for people to visit us on the weekends and help us return the place to a clean state, with Kit starting the visits this coming weekend. Angie's got her hands full with Leif, and I get the joy of sitting in the corner wishing I could be useful. The result is that the house slowly falls apart over the course of a week, and hopefully weekend visitors will help us keep some measure of sanity here.

Peace and love, all.

Tks,
Jeff Bailey

My dad's home, having had an angioplasty and three stints put in.

So we're all home now and recovering, and the prognosis is good all around.

More updates:

* I can now walk to the mailbox on my own, and I only need to rest once on the way.
* I'm generally leaving the walker alone. It causes me more grief than it solves.
* I feel confident making the three steps up and down the balcony - which is good because the main doors are still too heavy for me.
* I've had a shower. I smell much better.
* We're starting to take visitors now - Jim and Sarah were here last night, Andrew and Sarah are coming tonight. It'll be nice to feel a little less isolated.
* I haven't spoken to my dad in a couple of days, but they were still scheduling his angiogram when I last spoke to him. All the walking and stuff that I've been doing means that I'm spending the balance of my day sleeping, so hopefully I'll catch up later today.

At this point, I'll probably post updates a lot less frequently, because it feels like the initial touch-and-go part is done. I'm looking forward to being off the steroids, and slowly spacing out the medications and such, but we're just in that zone where I'm getting up and around and am just waiting for lifting restrictions and such to be removed.

In the last few days, I've managed to sort out the various school extensions I need, the short term disability paperwork, the DMV disabled sticker paperwork, and all that.

Phone calls are much appreciated - the number is in my Orkut and Facebook profiles, it gives me a chance to interact with people and I'm starting to worry that I have too much time and am bothering the ones I talk to al the time. I'm still quite behind on emails, mostly because typing on the blackberry gets to be a bit much after a while.

I suspect I'm about to go into that annoying phase of recovery where nothing is urgent anymore, and we're coping, but we go stir-crazy because I'm not actually better enough to interact with the world yet and Angie still has to do almost everything for me. Any suggestions on making that part of the recovery suck less are appreciated! I've watched it a pile of times, but everyone seems to forget about it (including the people going through it).

Sunrise is 7:11 here this morning, I think I'll try to sit outside for it.

Went to the doctors today to get the staples removed, but the skin is redder than he'd like so they only removed every other staple. Apparently the steroid that I'm on will tend to lead towards infection and slow healing, so this isn't entirely unexpected. What I *did* get was permission to shower and wash my hair.

You have to understand that part of growing my hair out when I was 13 was the negotiated requirement that I wash it every day. So pretty much for the past 19 years, I have. To then not do so for a couple of weeks has been really hard to cope with.

I also got the latest round of questions answered, the forms I need for short-term disability, the forms I need for a disabled sticker for the car, and all the usual.

Assuming I have a shower in the next 24 hours, I'm going to be up for visiting with folks soon after that. It would be good to interact with people over something other than a Blackberry.

The challenge:

* You're tired of eating the stuff you can reach, but you see that there's brown sugar on the bottom shelf under some things, which would make some Cheerios more edible.

You are:

* Going through steroid withdrawal
* Still somewhat stoned from the last hit of oxycodone
* Hungry
* Under movement restrictions, can't lift bend or twist in anyway. Including from the hips.
* In a rush because you poured the soymilk into the Cheerios already, thinking that there must be some sugar within reach *somewhere*

The solution:

* Knock the couscous and rice containers that are on top of the brown sugar onto the floor.
* Gently kick the laundry basket into the kitchen.
* Very carefully, holding the laundry basket in place with one leg, use the other one to soccer kick the brown sugar container into the laundry basket.
* Wedge the laundry basket against the opposite wall
* Standing in the laundry basket, gently use legs and ankles to roll the brown sugar to the highest point of the clothing.
* Walk a chair into the kitchen, sit on the chair.
* Use monkey-length arms to discover that brown sugar is now within reach. Barely. But we're not looking for sugar with honours, here. We're just looking for sugar.

All of which explains why there's containers of stuff, the laundry basket, and a chair in the middle of the kitchen floor: none of which I can return to their original locations because of the movement restrictions (can't really drag across carpet).

But the sugar never tasted sweeter. =) (It's a good thing Angie loves me...)

I've had a series of post-surgery firsts in the past few days... Some of them good:

My first wriggling into a pair of jeans.

My first walks outside without my walker.

My first couple of stairs.

Some of them less good:

My first setback - It seems that 1.5km is too far for me to walk with the walker. I pulled a muscle in my back. I'm almost back to 100% after a couple of days, but I got to discover a new class of opiates.

My first family emergency - My father had a heart attack. He seems to be okay, he's in Kamloops hospital now, and will transfer to Vernon next week for the Angiogram. Information on bypass versus blood thinners waits on that (as does going home versus transfering to Vancouver). This is apparently the same sort of thing that killed my grandfather in his 30's. So there's two concerns:

1) My dad: Medtech is better than it was back then, and they're monitoring him in-hospital. So, I'm optimistic. While I can't find this in the Wikipedia article, I'm generally under the impression that once you make it to the hospital, you're probably fine and that deaths from heart attacks are from people who do things like sit around and wait to see if they'll feel better.

2) Me: Hopefully the exercising, non-smoking, vegan thing is enough to mitigate this. Aside from my recent taking of steroids and opiates for my back, I've generally treated my body well, and I'll find out if I should be doing further things or monitoring to stay away from this one.

And, well, there it is.

It's funny sitting down to finally write something on LJ and not being sure what to write. I can tell stories of Angie's mom coming to support her and giving me time with my wife. I could rant about students putting in some of their first IVs (or not, actually since after the third try I got bitchy and she ran away. Literally. Oops.) I could talk about recovery, the joy that is delaudid, the devil that Valium turned out to be, or wonderful nurses who were so helpful and encouraging (and the ones who bent the rules and let me see Leif on his first year birthday) or the ones who lied, failed to check in on me and left me in distress for several hours.

On the whole, the people and experience were very good. From almost immediately after I woke up, things have been better. I hadn't realized there was pain associated with all this until it was gone post-surgery. The numbness is still there, but better that it was before by a long shot.

I do want to make sure I say thanks for all the energy, thoughts, and prayers. I felt good on Monday going in with the power and energy of literally hundreds behind me. Religiously, I have a complex relationship with this stuff, but I believe that at moments where a yes or a no gets to be decided by luck or external unknown forces, this can really help the answer be a yes. And I think we'd be surprised at how much of life fits into that category.

There are lots of emails and posts I haven't replied to yet. My lifting restrictions are such that I can't pick up my laptop. So if you see emails or LJ posts from me, its been typed on the iPhone or the Blackberry. Same with the instant messenger. I have my status set to "do not disturb" when I'm around so that I don't exceed my ability to type by getting into talking to too many people at once. My lifting restrictions continue for the next 6 weeks.

That said, I do enjoy chatting and writing. It just takes a while and is quite tiring.

I haven't figured out how to upload pictures to flickr such that the pictures are public, but that are not forced onto people who just wanted to see pictures of Leif. :)

Tired now. If there is any particular part of the surgery/recovery you want details on, let me know and i'll write about it.

*hugs and love*
Jeff