Surgery was Friday.  I spent a fair amount of time in the "holding area" before I went in.  I don't remember much after I got to the OR until about four hours later.  It took we a while to climb out of the fog and back to reality in the recovery room.  I can assure you that it was as close to a psychedilic experience as I ever want to have.  Soon after awareness set in, I was in the room with a stream if visitors coming in.

     Fortunately I did not know what I looked like until the next morning.  There is something a little lacking in "hospital" hair!  The nose tube doesn't do much for my looks either.  I spent the afternoon with Rob and Klep pretty much in lala land.  I stupidly felt I should go  as long as I could between pain medicine and by midnight the blood pressure was doing its thing heading upwards.  I came to my senses at that point and started using the Demorol regularly.

     Saturday I was up and walking a little.  Sunday I walked more and sat up for two hours in the chair.  Today I am aiming for six walks.  The pain is much less, the incision looks good; what we need now is for the intestinal tract to go to work.

     I have met some of the most wonderful people in here.  There is Khady who is from Senegal.  There is Cassandra, a tall, slim but strong young lady.  Most of all, though, I have appreiated my night time angel Tonya who just went off her twelve hour shift.  This morning she will take two of her kids to school and then go to her second job.  This will be her last week with the second job.  She has been accepted into the nursing program.  She and I purely had church here in the room the other night when the blood pressure finally leveled off!  Anyway, she goes off duty for seven days, so I probably will not see her again.  There have been lots of others:  Brittany, Tim, Vicky, Judy.  The list goes on and on.  Oh, and there is Marcus who appears at three o'clock in the morning to draw blood so that the results will be ready for the doctors when they do rounds.