Another Appointment

Troi: "How do you feel?"
Picard: "Almost human...with just a bit of a headache."
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That exchange was from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Best of Both Worlds, part 2, after Jean-Luc Picard was assimilated into the Borg collective and then was rescued and his crew had started the operations necessary to remove all the cybernetic implants. I am often reminded of that scene since I think of waking in the hospital with all those wires and tubes melded to my flesh.

I've mentioned that I can't seem to track time the way I used to anymore...breakfast, lunch, dinner, an snacky time...so I've taken to measuring my short-term medical progress by removal of various items implanted on my person.

Today was another milestone day. I had an appointment to see Angie at the clinic. She examined my progress and...drumroll!...removed my drainage grenade AND most of my staples! Most of the staples, not all, but I'll take what I can get.

No grenade and 90% fewer staples! Yay me!

I've been bleeding since I got home last Friday. Not a torrent, but enough that the gauze is pretty red by changing time in the morning and at night. Angie clarified that this was normal; I basically have a clot under the skin near the incision. As the clot breaks down and is re-absorbed into the skin it will, she said, ooze blood. Perfectly normal. I just have to keep it clean, take a preventative antibiotic she prescribed, and change the gauze every day. If something goes very wrong, I am to call them or go to the ER (depending on the severity).

How did the drain get removed? She first had cut the sutures securing it to my skin. It kind of reminded me of the Thanksgiving turducken the father-in-law and I had twined a season or two back...snip! Then she started prepping for pulling staples and in mid-conversation, when I was concentrating on some Percocet-inspired shiny on the wall, waited until I wasn't paying attention and deftly plucked the grenade right from my abdominal cavity without skipping a beat.

No warning. No pause.

There was a wet hissing bubble noise as the grenade sucked air in and exited the fleshy hole in my chest. I felt a weird sensation of something moving inside of me accompanied by a slightly dull pain. Then done.

I was wearing my Simpson's pajamas. It has a bright yellow shirt with Homer's face on it, stuck in a perpetual yell, mouth open, tongue wagging. My wife said I had a look on my face that closely resembled that face on the shirt for several minutes after the tube had wriggled free from my body.

I was still stifling the colorful metaphors for describing the young lady who pulled the tube free as she began plucking the staples from my incision with her perky disposition and a little metal tool.

I'm very glad the appointment showed progress. The doctor seemed to think I was progressing well too. She felt that my incision was doing very well, not "splitting" as much as she thought it would as the staples were removed.

I bet it's all the milk I've been drinking.

She said she'd remove the remaining staples next week when I see the dietitian group (yes, a group of us from the operation time I was at the hospital are all coming in for a group session, apparently) and then...we "graduate" to a full liquid diet!

I don't know how much it will matter since as I type this sentence it's 4:10 PM and I don't remember lunchtime going by. Whoops.

Progress, progress, progress. Still hurts as I move around, but I resemble something more human. I can't wait for my little dude to come home and see me...he was asking me last night, "How's your boo-boo, Daddy?"

Now I can show him the incision, bandaged instead of stapled, and reply, "A little better, dude. Daddy is feeling a little better."