Category: Health


post-opHello to all you wonderful people.

It is now 24 hours since I went under the knife. I didn’t post yesterday after the procedure for obvious reasons. Lynne, you were so very right and at the same time very wrong. You said that after the Versed went in I wouldn’t really care about what they were doing to me. Not only didn’t I care but about 10 seconds after the Versed went in I found myself in the recovery room. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Looker” from the early 80s; that is truly the feeling of time hiccupping.

Admittedly, the other effect of the time skip is the realisation that first you are dizzy and mildly disoriented. Secondly, there is great pain in your belly. It took me until today to realise that the pain felt like I was about to have a small creature ‘bust’ out of it and start singing ‘Hello my baby.’ About the time I woke up they administered some painkiller into my IV. Once I went from a 6 to about a 3 or 4 they sent me out of recovery back to a room.

In my room I waited for about 5 minutes before my glasses, iPhone and most importantly a Heather followed me. I was very happy to hear that Heather had broken her revulsion of Facebook long enough to post the news that I was fine and in recovery. I realise that everyone knew I was going to be fine. I knew (intellectually) I was going to be fine. But then there is emotional “Theatre of the Mind” which can think of unending terrors to eat away at intellectual reason.

The day was spent pretty much on the reclining sofa in the living room bouncing between unconscious and eating while pretty much consistently in pain. I was so out of it that I slept through 2 episodes of Doctor Who. I have an ice bag for my tummy, which has an amazingly deep navel now. People were wonderful in helping me get things, as standing up is a horrid strain on my body. Just being in a standing position is absolutely a horrid and burning thing. I finally realised what this specific pain felt like.

In the evening, Dinner was light. I skipped Arrow although it is on the DVR and went to bed around 9:30. I wish this had been uneventful.

Bed was unpleasant bordering on nightmarish. First there was the laying down bit. In general, you really have no idea how much you use your abdominal muscles until the thought of them hurts like an ice pick shoved in your stomach. Once actually in bed, you are laying basically flat. This is essentially standing but at a different pitch of rotation. Fortunately with a great mound of pillows I was able to get enough bend that it quieted down the throng of screaming nerve endings. I think they are planning a revolt.

The good news is that there is Norco (Vicodin + Acetaminophen). The bad news is that reaching it on the bedside table is worse than laying down in bed. All it requires one to do is to roll over using and twisting their abs. Heather actually pushed me to roll me. And at that moment I flashed on what being 90 must be like. This made me grumpy. With meds however, I was able to roll a little and sleep. Granted, the latter might be more on the order of passing out from Vicodin aided unconsciousness, but that is neither here nor there.

So for the next day or so… there is recovery, pain and Vicodin. I chatted briefly with my team at work. My manager knew I was doing this and we’d scheduled the time off.

However, in the meantime…

I can not in any way sufficiently show my appreciation for the comments, likes, and support from friends and family through Facebook. Over 7 posts there were nearly 100 ‘likes’ and 90 comments of support. While this isn’t the Academy Awards; beyond thanking everyone there are a couple of people I really have to take notice of:

Michelle Ma… and Erica… two people I haven’t seen in far too long. Both sent me very lovely messages of support outside of commenting on one of my posts. My dearest Carleen, one of my closest friends in college and someone who knew how dearly I crushed for her, Carleen sent a comment that had an image of a bouquet of flowers. I have no idea why this touched me so much, but it just made me smile and the pain subsided for a little.

Obviously also is Heather who cared for me while I was getting ready the night before the surgery and especially for updating everyone when she got the news from the doctor. I do not envy her life in pain, but it makes her so amazing when I am suffering. Both she and additionally Kylie (who helps around the house) have been beyond amazing in helping me as I meander around the house like a 90 year old.

But, I really must give a should out to Michelle Mc… Honestly, I haven’t seen her since a Pennsic that was approximately 15 or so years ago. She and her (now) husband were in the neighboring camp. Michelle talked (online chatted) with me most of the morning while I was waiting for nurses, injections, IV, etc. She was calming, reassuring, and above all else distracting. It was like having a friend in the triage room holding my hand. It was a very special thing to me and I will likely never have the chance to do for her, what she did for me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try 🙂

Well, the next Vicodin is beginning to kick in. The number of typos I am making is enough that auto-correct is beginning to scowl at me.

Again, thank you to everyone for the kind words, support, and just mentions of thinking of me. I am so proud and blessed to know about 95% of you personally (There were a couple of friends of friends that were equally nice, but unknown to me 🙂

Once I can move without pain again, I really would like to offer each and everyone of you a huge hug!

Love to all.

Andrei with a huge belly button divot again.

uploadingThe first image upload API is now finished. This API will now take images in any format and save it tied to a relevant record in a web neutral format to the archive. This work took more effort than I expected, but it’s making things move very well. I’ve also fixed several links so that development and production environments work exactly the same. The client is now pulling entirely from the new APIs and works when used over the VPN. For some useless statistics I now have over 100 active source files with about 110 lines of code on average per source. This seems very short but the reality is that there are several subclasses that are very tiny working off nicely complex but not obfuscated super classes. I am likely missing a tonne of material. There are also several test apps that are folded in there whose entire purpose is to test APIs. Once they are removed the numbers will be a little more realistic. However, the important thing in development is not the size of the work but the results.

On the downside I’ve been fighting a bad back for the past 3 days. I will likely be calling my doctor tomorrow to take a look and see what is going on there. On the upside, however, the only chair I find any comfort and support in is the one in my home office. So, as long as I discipline myself to work… the pain isn’t as bad. (Granted, a good bit of Aleve® helps quite a bit)

Tomorrow’s goals are to call the doctor. Implement the location uploader in the DataUploader utility, And make sure that I blog for the day.

 

chattering-teethThis weak (sic) has been full of excitement. Thanks to the surgery which left me doped pretty much all week, I’ve gotten far less done than I wanted to. This is right down to having to push off an appointment from Friday to Monday as well as completely missing important mail from my land lady. There have been some highlights however.

  1. While I’m likely not using them correctly, I’m navigating Tomcat, Java, and Eclipse more efficiently now.
  2. I’ve done my first servlet code to push data back to the database from a client
  3. I’ve been working on a data entry app to make adding data easier. (It’s crappy, but it has some nice features including db lookup)
  4. I may have a potential Product Manager to start working with arranging the business end of thing.

On the agenda (aside from catching up on email and meetings)

  1. Data Entry Client
    1. Add versioning info to the client 02104.01.12..2250
    2. Add the data client to the continuous automation 02104.01.12..2250
    3. Gather the collected data for push back to the server
    4. Add a <strike>redacted</strike> to let me see where a <strike>redacted</strike> is.
  2. Servlet
    1. Finish the data PUT calls for posting data to the DB
    2. Learn how to automate the checkin of java code with CI to push it directly to the Tomcat machine.
  3. Client
    1. Use the new data managed in the DB to populate the existing interfaces
    2. Disable unused interfaces for Alpha distribution (keeping active for dev dist)

As you can see, the week ahead is fairly full code wise.

Time and code marches on!

obstructions-logoWith surgery on Tuesday coupled with the winter blast closing all local schools for two days; things slowed down this week for the project. I wish things were moving faster. Personally, I wish I could do more but I take each day as it comes. This week I started on improving the data entry system for our new data bases. Due to the complexity of the data making a data entry system is going a little more slowly than I expected.

I did however do an expansion on the Java Servlet to pull from one specific table. The code to pull and serve the data went extremely quickly. So, there’s a growing hope for me and my java skills. I’d still say at this point I’m a dangerous n00b who’s code will need to be rewritten, but it does the job.

Hopefully tomorrow I’m back up to full speed.

I’m back to wandering around the house in a somewhat tipsy manner. The tonne of Halcion they put me on wore off. I slept from 3 until 9:30. Now I have a mouthful of temporary apparatus. Smile picture in a few days when I am less self-conscious.

Obviously there is hunger (having to eaten since 9pm last night)

I had some wonton soup, a pepsi, and am now attempting mango sorbet.

We’ll see how this goes.

For those curious about The Project. The house rule was as follows:

  1. You may blog
  2. You may not drive
  3. You WILL NOT code.

SO back to that tomorrow.