Hello 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.
The 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.
Apologies to my Armchair Director readers for this delay and topic switch.
As I ramp back from my tri-annual (Meaning every three years) bout of Pneumonia, things are beginning to settle back in. A local company has expressed potential interest in me. They are pre-screening me with a programming project. The idea is to replicate base functionality and UI of an app. This is not as throw-away simple as it sounds. You have to at least implement the real functionality which does require a knowledge of the technology stack.
When I was 12 years old my father bought me my first computer. It was an Apple ][. There was no “Plus” or “e” or any other symbol. This was the original II computer. This was a $2,000 piece of hardware and at the age of 12 I had NO idea what that meant. Especially in the late 1970s. (Yes, you can do the math) I loved this thing. The hardware, the software, the manuals. It was amazing.