To point out the obvious, I survived the surgery that was the subject of my last posting, and have been in a process of slow recovery over the past three and a half weeks. The surgery – a quintuple cardiac bypass, which I didn’t even know was a thing – went well, and I’m told my recovery has been as good as could be expected. I’m grateful to my surgeon and all the others who were involved in getting me through this, as insane as it all seems to me.

Where I’m at now is a world of difference from where I was in the first few days after the surgery. There are still lots of inconveniences and things that are not yet back to normal, but at least I’m past the excruciating pain and weakness that characterized those initial days. At that time I had to wonder why I ever put myself through such mutilation and torture, and still I can’t imagine ever going through anything like that again. I had a pretty clear sense throughout the whole ordeal that I could return to normal functioning and an active life, but I realized that if all I had to look forward to was permanent disability and struggle, as others I saw around me, I’d have a pretty hard time justifying it. Even today, as far as I’ve come, I had to wonder how the mechanisms that are my heart and body could sustain all this and keep on functioning. This is a mystery I may never unravel.

In case you’re wondering about the title for this posting, as much as I’m now ambulatory and functioning at a relative level of normalcy, I still feel I’m sitting on the shoulder of the road. Other than emails and shopping lists and questions for my doctors and a couple of business-related items, this is the first piece of any sort of coherency and even marginal creativity I’ve been able to write in 26 days. And it’s admittedly pretty thin. I’m hoping in the next several days I’ll be able to write more, and then more, and I can resume more regular posting to these blogs, but I’ve found that gathering mental energy is virtually as hard as gathering physical energy. And having anything worth saying is yet a step beyond that.

Four days past the surgery I attempted to get online, and was met with the shocking reality that I had forgotten all my passwords. I still couldn’t muster the strength to have someone fetch my laptop from its bag or to hold it on me, and trying to do things on my phone reinforced the feeling of insanity of doing anything serious on a phone, even when in normal health. I had that sense before the surgery, and that disconcerting experience only confirmed it. Two days later, when I finally did get onto my laptop, I was astounded at the number of typing mistakes I made. It was like my fingers were not in direct contact with my brain and they took on twitches and strokes that defied my best attempts to control them. Not quite as disjointed as the time I tried to work on a Turkish keyboard, but close. I’m told that anesthesia can really scramble both brain and body cells, and so I’m chalking these aberrations up to that. I’m doing a lot better now with typing and other fine motor skills, and the files on my laptop helped me recover my passwords, but the process has been a continuum.

Other bodily functions – notably an astoundingly annoying throat irritation and coughing, and problems with peeing – have slowly been recovering, and while not back to what I’d characterize as normal, are hugely better than they were in the early days.

I had five and part of a sixth day in the hospital following the surgery, and then four and part of a fifth day in a rehab center, located on the same complex as the hospital, after that. At that point I got the boot, and two wonderful friends and fellow boat people came to fetch me, assist with getting food and medications, and establish me back aboard my boat, which is my home. I don’t know what I would have done without them, and I’ll be forever grateful to them. It’s two weeks today that I’ve been back aboard, and I think returning here was the best alternative. This past Tuesday my surgeon, with some persuasion, gave me back my driving privileges, and that made a huge difference in my life. And two days ago my primary physician told me I’m very impatient. I told her I know I’m a pain in the ass, but I wasn’t challenging her expertise. That’s just me. And she laughed.

I’m going to have lots more to say about the medical and healthcare situation in this country in coming weeks and months on FJY.US and I may have some fictional things to say about it here on Stoned Cherry. I’m fortunate in that I have access to Medicare and private insurance, and that made a huge difference. It shocks some people, but I really have nothing negative to say about my insurance company. And I have lots of praise for the doctors, nurses, aides (known, it appears, as Patient Care Technicians in some circles these days), therapists, and all the others who assisted and supported me through all this. That said, when there were rare failures they were pretty notable, and one thing I came to discover is that it usually is the little things, the small details, that can have the biggest impact on a patient and the patient’s experience. I’ll have more to say on this, too.

I really feel bad for writing all this self-centered drivel, but I felt some explanation of where I’ve been for the past weeks was in order, a kind of transition from the breakdown on the shoulder I went through to getting back into the traffic pattern. I’ve seen the moon and the sun since my last posting, and so day-by-day it’s time to get on with life. I promise, barring any unforeseen circumstances, this will be the last posting focusing on this whole thing, and I now can say, enough of these adventures.

I’ll be pulling off the shoulder pretty soon, so watch this space for what’s to come.