brykmantra.com

Let’s see if I can sum things up really quickly:

I got my used wireless router today and, with some difficulty, got it working — although I’m still having trouble getting on the net wirelessly on my Win98 laptop; I stayed dedicated to my evening lung walk tonight, even though it meant missing the first 15 minutes of Lost; speaking of Lost, Sawyer came up with two great nicknames for Kate and Hurley: Pippi Longstocking and Grape Ape (Ha! Grape Ape!); I finally thought to look for episodes of my newest favorite show on YouTube tonight, and sure enough they were there!

Finally, 2 things: Today at work I was on the giving end of our periodic Passing of the Shirt ceremony, after being in possession of it for just short of a year; remind me to go into detail.

And finally: Re American Idol tonight: Worst … Final 2 … Ever.

I mean, I like Taylor, I think he’s a really nice guy, but still …

Yes, you’re expecting me to tell you about my first day back at the soul-crushing grind of work.

There’s not much to tell, really …

Okay, okay, maybe there is, if I think about it, but I’ve been busy: Chiropractor’s appointment, going to the drugstore, sorting through some old CD-ROM’s in order to clean up the area by my computer hutch, designing a price list sign for my wife’s beauty shop, responding to comments … you know, the usual.

But here’s something cool to tide you over:

Ever get nostalgic for those days when you could fire up your Commodore Vic20 and play a Scott Adams text adventure games? I know I do.

Here’s the next best thing: Thy Dungeonman 3, a text-game parody that also stands on its own as a game.

Bonus feature not shared by the circa-1982 games: Some monochrome illustrations (which are more like late 80s) liven up the story.

Check it out, it’s fun.

(Via Table of Malcontents, the blog of Wired magazine.)

Well, this is it: I’m about to head out to work, for the first time since the last day of February.

On one hand, I’m looking forward to no longer being a lounge-around member of the pajama-clad sofa-dwelling daytime-TV watching set, and actually being productive again.

On the other hand, I’ll be back at work, which of course sucks.

You know, the whole sofa-dwelling thing is highly underrated, now that I think about it …

Anyway, this is a major step, so wish me luck …

… The end of my two-month stint of non-productivity, that is. I’m going back to work tomorrow, at least for half days.

The slack was nice while it lasted, but it’s going to be nice to be a working member of society again.

I’ve shaved off my beard, since I got tired of looking like a Jethro Tull album cover, but I’ve been shaving it off in stages and photographing the progress.

First I trimmed it to a goatee for a couple of days, then today I trimmed it into a Fu Manchu, which my wife totally hated, so I took some commemorative photographs and then whittled it down to its present Jason Lee stage.

I plan to visually document it tomorrow morning after my shower (so I’ll have clean hair), and then I’ll finish it off before I head off into battle.

Anyway, tonight I have to go do things to which I have become unaccustomed, such as prepare to look presentable in clothing in public.

Wish me luck …

Today it was six weeks since the surgery, but more important than that, an big milestone happened today: I drove.

My wife has been a little overprotective in that regard, as far as I’m concerned. When I first got out of the hospital, she wouldn’t even let me walk into a grocery store, much less carry the groceries.

More relevant, though, was the fact that my heavy dose of pain killers put me in such a fog as to make driving inadvisable.

Now, though, I’ve cut my dosage by half a couple of weeks ago, and I go about 50% farther between pills, so the mental swamp through which I slog on a daily basis has a much lower viscosity, but she still had reservations about letting me behind the wheel.

But since I have to get back to driving before too long anyway, and I’m tired of being helpless to go farther than my walking capacity (about 25 minutes total), and my vehicle inspection is due soon and I hate having to try to get it done on the last weekend, so today I decided to start up the truck and make a circuit around our area of town — without giving my wife prior knowledge of this experiment, of course.

And of course she was peeved that I took any kind of action without her express prior consent; women are like that.

But I assured her that I only ran into one other car — “Oh, very funny,” she said –and that there were practically no pedestrian casualties at all.

Anyway, a big part of the reason I wanted to do a test drive was because I knew how tired she was today — and in pain too, from six weeks of shifting her wait off her broken ankle — so Iwanted to be available to go pick us up some dinner so she wouldn’t have to stop on the way home.

As it turned out, she forgave me for my unsanctioned foray when she realized that it would save her that much more effort, so I headed out a second time to pick up some food from Mi Casa Tex-Mex.

And the important thing is that it set a major precedent, and thought I can now go out during the day when necessary.

Not that I’ll be able to do that much longer: I’ve got my family physician appointment on Monday, and with his blessing, and if my pain subsides some more in the next five days, I might be going to back work next week, if for only half-days.

I called work yesterday, and the receptionist, whom I supervise, said that she really, really wants me to come back — probably because I’m very protective of my turf, and I serve as a buffer of sorts between her and all the craziness.

I’m also wanting to get back soon because we’ll only be in the old building for a couple more weeks, and I don’t want other people moving my stuff.

It’s just a matter principle.

It’s bad enough that somebody’s sitting at my desk because Main Computer Guy has still never gotten him a computer.

You can call me old-fashioned, but I’m just not comfortable with somebody I barely know using my computer.

I feel so violated.

I finally got around to uploading my hospital pictures to Flickr, so check ‘em out.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long, or that I haven’t posted anything since March 1st.

I blame the pain pills.

One positive aspect of not having an appetite is that I’ve lost about 15 pounds since my surgery. That means that the external, waist-down part of my wardrobe (i.e., pants) has effectively tripled.

For the past couple of years, I’ve had two pairs of jeans and two pairs of khakis, all size 38, that I can fit into, and a closet full of size 36s, that, um, aren’t quite comfortable any more.

Until now, that is. My wife has been saying that I’d probably fit in to the 36s now, so today I put that theory to a test, and sure enough, I was able to wear my Gap cargo pants today when we went to get groceries.

They were a bit snug, of course, but still wearable.

Now let’s just see how long this lasts after I’m off the painkillers and no longer queasy …

We met with the surgeon today, three and a half weeks after the operation, to get his appraisal of my recovery efforts so far, and it’s good news: The world of hurt that I could expect to be in at this point exceeds what I am currently experience.

More importantly, it looks like nothing has pulled loose, come unstitched, or gotten infected.

Best of all, he said that I no longer need my dressing.

I’m referring, of course, not to dressing along the lines of Thousand Island, Buttermilk Ranch, or Balsamic Vinaigrette, but rather the type that uses sterile gauze to keep wounds clean.

The dressing has been a pain, because whenever it gets wet, it has to be changed, and whenever I shower, it gets wet. Thus, I’ve been limiting my showers to one every two days, in order to minimize the amount of time my wife has to spend changing my wound diaper.

Fewer showers also cut down on my tape rash, which is one of those things you don’t always anticipate in situations like these.

Anyway, I’m now free of my cotton-gauze prison, so I can go back to cleaning myself like a conscientious human being should.

Seriously, my hair is so fine-textured that it not only soaks up all my skin oils, it actually pulls grease molecules out of the air.

After I wash and dry my hair, it looks like a haystack; the next morning it looks like it was painted on with a brush.

You can imagine, then, what it looks like after the second night unwashed.

I’m supposed to take 15-minute walks to get my lungs back in condition, but I get self-conscious strolling through the neighborhood looking like I’ve been dipped headfirst in a vat of bear grease.

As if I don’t look enough like a vagrant with my week’s worth of stubble and my Lortab stagger.

Anyway, I learned something else about my health today: That I’m nowhere near ready to go back to work. All it took was a car ride (20 minutes each way), walking to another building to get x-rayed, and waiting around for a couple of hours to wear me completely out.

So much for driving twice that distance to work and sitting at a desk all day.

In fact, I’m getting exhausted just thinking about it.

I had to go see our family doctor on Monday for my first post-surgery checkup, and he said that I’m recovering every bit as good as — or even better than — could be expected, considering how drastic the operation was.

That’s good to know, considering that I feel like hammered crap on a daily basis; I’m glad this is normal.

More importantly, he confirmed that he’s been consulting with oncologists since the surgery, and it looks like the cancer is completely gone. We’ll need to do CT scans every six months for a couple of years to confirm this, but so far I seem to be in the clear.

Here’s the bizarre part: It was two months ago today that I got the x-ray that started this whole ball rolling. I didn’t even know that there was a suspicious looking spot on my right lung, which would turn out to be a “mass”, which would turn out to be a carcinoid neuroendocrine tumor — and now, 60 days later, it looks like I’m a cancer survivor.

Man, talk about getting in the Express Lane. If I had to have something this serious, this is the only way to go.

(And while I’m thinking about it, thanks to everybody out there for the comments, emails, get-well cards, flowers and visits, for both myself and my injured wife. It’s really helping with our recovery process.)

Over the weekend, one of my (supposedly) regular readers expressed surprise that I was out of the hospital, and had been since the 9th. I had thought that, a) I had mentioned that fact directly, and b) it was implied in some of my posts since then (especially since I couldn’t post on the hospital’s crappy in-room Internet setup), but let’s go ahead and remove all doubt with some details of my home-based recovery:

Sleeping Arrangements: As soon as I came home, my wife graciously offered to sleep on the couch to let me have the bed to myself, but it was soon obvious that it wouldn’t work out that way. I took a nap on the bed when I got home, but I couldn’t lie flat on my back, since I was used to being propped up in the hospital bed, I couldn’t sleep on my right side, of course, since that’s where my surgery was. Even sleeping on my left side hurt too much, with my right arm hanging down and pulling on the incision spot.

But the main problem was that once I was in bed, it was nearly impossible to get out by myself. I finally was able to twist myself onto my stomach and then to push up from their, but it was an ordeal I didn’t want to repeat.

The couch, on the other hand, had several spots to hold on to to pull up, so that sealed the deal.

So Karlyn, God bless her, made up the couch with sheets and blankets, and I’ve been sleeping there ever since. It actually hasn’t been too bad: It’s kind of like camping out, but with better shelter, temperature control, padding, refrigerator access, and big screen TV.

Okay, okay, so it’s nothing like camping out. But it’s a nice change of scenery: With as much time as I’m spending sleeping and resting, I’d go crazy if I had to spend all that time in the bedroom.

And one bonus feature of me being in the living room is that my wife is forced to get more rest. Normally she would get up early and go into the kitchen and living room and start working around the house — even with her ankle broken.

Now, though, she stays in the bedroom in order to not disturb me, and as a result she stays off her injured foot and get extra rest herself.

Nurse’s Aide: Our sheltie Molly has always slept in the floor of our bedroom, but since I’ve been in the living room, so has she. My wife said that Molly can tell I’m not feeling good and is being protective, and that since I’m the one who found her and brought her home, that she has a special bond with me anyway.

My theory is that Molly knows that, at any given time, I’m the one who’s more likely to be snacking, and, with my new prolonged proximity to the kitchen, the smart place for a dog to hang out is where the food is.

Never mind that I haven’t had as much of an appetite since the operation; doggie habits die hard.

I’m Walkin’, Yes Indeed: One positive aspect of this particular recovery is that I’m not completely home-bound or bed-ridden: Since this was surgery on my lung, the surgeon has prescribed fifteen-minute walks as part of my rehabilitation. That has made for a nice change of scenery, and gives me a perspective outside of these walls.

I just put my new MP3 player on shuffle, so that I never know which of my 3000 songs will come up next, and head out for seven or so minutes, then head back.

The only problem is that there’s not much within 7 minutes of the house but other houses. It would be nice if there were a convenience store within that time-distance, but that will have to wait until I’m up to 30 minute walks.

On the plus side, though, there’s a nice park to the west, but I don’t have any time to spend there before I have to head back.

In the northerly direction, there’s a scenic ravine by the middle school, and some clusters of trees north of that, so that makes for a pleasant backdrop.

Plus, there are newspaper machines within 5 minutes in two directions, so that’s a good goal, as opposed to just pointless wandering.

The Pain, The Pain: I had been told in advance to expect six weeks of pain: From the six-inch-long incision, to the ribs they had to spread (and, in one case, cut loose), and of course from all the cutting that took place on my lung.

What I hadn’t counted on where all the little auxiliary, supplemental pains. For one thing, I hadn’t been walking much in the ten weeks that I had pneumonia, so my first day of three 15-minute walks took their toll on my calves and shins.

And the couch, although more comfortable than the bed, still did a number on my back. I was propped up on the armrest with the help of pillows, and by the end of the night the pillows would be compressed, and the armrest would be pushing into my upper back.

It’s always the things you don’t count on that seem to hurt the most.

The Pills, The Pills: The surgeon gave me hydrocodone for the pain, but they just barely take the edge off. Even worse, they put me in a constant state of fogginess, so the past 11 days has been a total blur.

When I go on my walks, I’m always afraid I’m going to get arrested for public drunkenness.

“No, you’ve got it all wrong, officer — I’m just hopped up on goofballs!”

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Okay, so that should remove all doubt that I’m back at home now, and also explain why it’s probably a good thing that I haven’t posted much the last couple of days …