Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1570
Post surgery day 1
Good morning. Hello hello hello. I have survived my surgery. It went okay. There was a moment there where the doctor couldn’t find the piece of glass in my finger and had started mentally prepping me for this fact, telling me that maybe he flushed it out and it would be okay. But earlier he had told me he had never not found a foreign object, so, you know. How did he know it would be okay. My blood pressure, a catastrophe on a good day, started spiking. Everyone thought I was scared of the surgery, but that wasn’t it. I was depressed at the thought of living with this thing within me forever. It hurts and is making my finger numb. I want it gone.
Eventually, though, he found it. It was the size of a grain of sand. He seemed surprised he found it. “Oh shit, oh shit,” he kept saying.
But I was so relieved I didn’t mind at all.
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We are listening today to yesterday’s mix. It is so great. I listened to it on the drove to Cary yesterday, driving through the beautiful countryside around Jordan lake. Just lovely. That Hot Chip song, man.
They did not let me use my phone or do anything with my other hand. They did not let me watch, They put a blanket over my head. I suspect that is fine and I did not want to watch.
During the surgery they had these amazing blue scissor-shaped clamps and O was obsessed with them and they gave me one as a gift. It was very nice of them. They also gave me a Diet Coke after the surgery, so you know. Panther Creek doesn’t just have an awesome name, they are pretty awesome there. A nurse told me her sister was an Amazon delivery driver and they talk all the time about how many packages people get and cannot understand how many packages some people get so, you know, PSA: You are being judged.
It has been 22 hours since the surgery and the local anesthesia is still going strong. For most of yesterday, I had zero feeling in three fingers — they share a common nerve, the doctor said, so the anesthesia would effect them all. A day later I have maybe 75% of the feeling back in my index finger — though notably not the finger tip, so typing is still insanely difficult. I have zero feeling in my middle finger, the one he operated on, though I’m starting to feel a dull pain at the base where they did the trigger surgery. My ring finger is still fully numb. I Googled “how long does local anesthesia last” and it told me eight hours, but you can’t trust anything on the internet these days.
On the one hand I am frustrated, I can barely type, I can’t use my trackpad with my right hand so I’ve moved it over to my left hand and that is just weird. I want to write to you guys and ramble on about (checks notes) MacOS Tahoe and company boycotts and the end of Game of Thrones, but I guess it is going to be at least one more day. I haven’t figured out how to turn on text-to-speech on my Mac yet, just sat down. Maybe I should have figured that out before I started. My hand feels perpetually like it’s asleep — constantly tingling. It has taken me forever to write these words and I am making constant typos that I have to go back and fix.
Buuuut… the longer the anesthesia is working, the less time I have to deal with the pain, I suppose. And I have a sneaking hunch that the pain is going to be rough.
In the meantime, though, this is an exercise in frustration, so I will leave you now. Hopefully we will be back up and running in another day? Or two?
I’d say “fingers crossed” but I can’t cross them.
Club mix for you today. Bit of a bookend because t has a remix of that Hot Chip song I was just talking about. And some new Nine Inch Nails. That Tron soundtrack is very good.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.