On the other side

Well, it's done. Done and done. As I sit here, I've been home just shy of 24 hours now. Starting to feel a little bit like normal. Most of the gas seems to have subsided, which was the main discomfort.

I'm home with a fair number of prescriptions. I have these needles that inject blood-thinner, but they're really fine and you inject your lower belly so you don't really feel it. Done it twice now; have seven more to go. I have these capsules I have to break open and spread on yogurt or apple sauce each morning for 6 months as a preventative to ulcers. After that, it's pretty much just vitamins. A daily multivitamin I've been taking anyway, a B12 every two days, and calcium citrate and D3 three times a day. Ehn, okay. So I'm a pill guy now. At least none it's prescriptions after 6 months. Oh, and children's Tylenol syrup for the next two weeks, as needed. For the moment, I'm taking it every 8 hours needed or not, just to be on the safe side.

It's kind of astonishing how quickly all this went, now that I think about it. 48 hours ago right now, I'd already been out of surgery for nearly a six hours, and in my own room for about 3. I went in at pretty much exactly 8. My folks and P-Doug were there and P-Doug was getting updates on his phone, so I know that surgery started at 8:13, and I was sewn up at 9:35, I think. That's amazingly quick. I remember the anesthesiologist saying "you're going to start feeling a little drowsy", and looking around, thinking about stuff. I never felt drowsy. It was like a light switch. About 11:15 I woke up. Saw my mom about 11:45. Got moved to my room just after noon, when my folks both came in to see me before heading home to Hamilton.

That room was pretty great. It was just for one person. I thought you had to pay extra for that kind of thing. Had its own bathroom/shower. I watched CP24 for a little over a day so I was all up on the local news. The cat up the phone pole who had to be rescued in Etobicoke. The shitty weather. The folks running to head the federal Conservative Party and the Ontario Liberal Party. The guy who went postal at the brewery in Milwaukee. And umpteen commercials for guys who want your gold, chase ambulances, or counsel your debt.

My heartbeat was fairly elevated in the evening, between 90 and 115, and they were concerned, but I was like, "My heart always races when I have gas pains; it make me anxious." The fact that the machine was going off every time it got above 90 only made the anxiety worse; it was a vicious circle. When they came in every hour hours to check me at night, yeah, it was between 66 and 72. Of course. I wasn't worked up. I was asleep. I couldn't believe this was something unusual to them. The blood pressure was good; in the 110s to 120 over 70s. Even I'm surprised I've managed to hold onto that, and I'm hoping having done this lets me keep it. I think I mentioned I found out recently that Larry had something like 225 over something, which is astonishing. He's managed to get his weight back down under 200.

My first meal? Cream of Wheat and some berry Greek yogurt. Managed to eat about a third of it with no problems. Lunch was cream of tomato soup and chocolate pudding. I got through most of the soup, and nibbled at the pudding. I didn't want to go crazy, but I had to have me some of that pudding. :) Around 1:30 they officially released me, so I called P-Doug and he arrive a bit before 3. Got in my civvies and checked out, then got my prescriptions. Then came home. P-Doug and I shot the breeze till 7 or so, tried some of the pho broth I bought, and then I hit the hay about 8. Woke up a few times, sipped water, got up for good a little after 6. I'm feeling sort of back to normal at the moment.

Anyway, in the meantime, I lost 20 lbs, most of it during the Optifast regimen. So there's that, anyway. I have to say, I enjoyed the Optifast. It was like drinking thin cake mix. :) I only departed from it a few times. I had two cups of the chili I made... I just had to chew something... had a 750 ml tub of no fat no sugar Greek yogurt I experimented with with my syrups and stuff; and last weekend when I was out with P-Doug and Larry I had a Greek salad with some slicked chicken on it. A farewell to solid food for a while, but not some guilt-ridden blow-out like a couple Apache burgers or something. :) I felt fine about it. It helped 'move things along', too, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, I was pretty much true to the Optifast.

Anyway, blah blah blah. So, that's that. It's actually done. Not just speculation, not just something a few months down the road... it's an irrevocable part of life moving forward. Time to make the best of it.