27 days...and then back in the world!

How do you blog about 27 days in the hospital? I was admitted for a pre-op test on April 1 (a happy April Fool's Day colonoscopy.) April 2, the anesthesia guy came into my room early in the morning, and the last thing I really remember is 'scooch a little closer to me on the bed,' and then an epidural, and then I woke up in PACU, more than 12 hours later.

It was a cast of thousands surgery, a harder surgery that took more finesse and had a greater chance of failing than the colorectal surgeon initially wanted to do--but I had second thoughts after he explained the pelvic extenteration, and asked him instead to do the bladder-sparing surgery the urologist had described during my pre-op visit. And when it worked (yeah, it appears to have worked), his Fellow showed up in PACU saying, through the morphine has, 'I just wanted you to know that you still have a bladder.'

There were good things...and bad things. There were twists and turns. I was in hospital for 17 days, released for 5, and then readmitted for another 10 days after I spiked a fever. I saw a whole class of Fellows rotate out. I discovered all the variations of the hospital menu--why is it we can send a man to the moon, but we cannot serve decent hospital food? ;-) I met wonderful nurses and nurse assistants. I spent three days in pediatrics, and learned about the 'candy cart.' I made my doctors and nurses laugh, regularly (that's me, the last comic laying down.) I sipped my water and juice from paper cups with a straw that had a little paper umbrella on it (thanks, Cheryl!)

While I was in the hospital, the world moved on. I had a poetry reading in Syracuse, and won cash. I wrote in my little PDA, everything that happened, but I still have to sort it out. I got a lot of email, most of which got deleted.

And now, out for good (fingers crossed, still no fevers), all I want to do is be able to walk all the way from Madison Ave. to the Met, maybe even to the park.

I just want to be normal again.
But maybe that ship has sailed.