9/29/96:

Back to work!  Monday, I'm allowed to telecommute.  It will probably be nearly November before I can be there in person, lest SamTrans' lurching uproot my teeny blossoms.

Life has been extremely dull with young Kevin out of town.  My big excitement was to [FINALLY!] watch Braveheart.  I liked it better than I thought I would (I'm no Gibson fan).  It REALLY bothered me how dirty everyone got.  Since most of recent past has been spent with below-standard blood counts, this gave me much anxiety.  I was so relieved when they all finally jumped in the river, but they immediately got filthy again.  On the other hand, after what I've been thru, I was quite comfortable with all the slashing and burning and bleeding -- looked like normal everyday life to me.  When they cauterized Grampa's arrow wound with a redhot poker, I sneered, "Hah! I've done that!"  He should see how brave he would be having tubes pulled out.  The English castle was kind of okay, at least it was clean, and I liked that all the women had weensy-chests like me (how the mighty have fallen) (deflated?).

My favorite was Steven, the Irishman, cause he was nuts.  I never knew Dominick as a youngster, but I'm sure that's what he was like. But I related to Wallace, too.  As a programmer, watching the dodging of buckets of hot oil & hails of arrows, while the nobility "negotiates" and cuts secret deals, I could only think:  Been there, done that.  After endless and mindnumbingly repetitive acquisition meetings, I could picture me lying battered, screaming "Freedom!" with my dying breath.  And I loved it that they painted their faces blue.  Now that purple hair is another been-there/done-that, face paint is a real possibility.  I have to find replacement uses for my body.  Like certain boy-persons (no names, Doug), who have a car that has passed on, and they turn it into a play-toy for entertainment.  Come to think of it, there might be a whole new use for those fur dice.

JoeBob says "check it out".

I'm doing pretty well from Monday's surgery.  It hurt way more than I expected.  I kind of thought I wouldn't notice anymore.  So I stayed stoned for most of the week.  I thought dealing with life with one arm was hard, now I'm learning about doing it with no arms.  Mostly it's the little things that are bad -- opening a jar of pickles, or trying to draw the curtains.  I have no clue what I look like yet, I am tightly & completely bound in an enormous ace bandage.  For all I know, they'll remove it and I'll have camellias, or Barney puppets or something.  The one thing I DO know is that I look a lot like pear.  This time they removed the drain in a couple days; that was a blessing.  The path report on the discard was very good.  Chock full of abnormal cells, but nothing virulent was found.  The report was summarized "Grossly Unremarkable", which is definitely going to be my next t-shirt.  I'll be going back & forth to the hospital for awhile, for continuing drainage problems, suture removal, tattooing, etc., and will have to continue to be monitored for spread/recurrence.  Other than that, I should be able to once again try to get my life back.