March 15, 1997

Well . . . I had the surgery this morning. I don’t know which was worse: the surgery or getting up at 5am. Although I had forgotten about the comet as soon as I opened the door to start walking up to the hospital, there it was, attracting my attention without looking into sky. For those of you who don’t have a tittling of historical au courant the appearance of a comet is considered to be an omen of an upcoming annus mirabilis. On top of that is the portentous date of march 15—the ides of march. The fates would seem to indicate that I would get screwed twice. Maybe you don’t believe in superstitious hoodoo, but the fact remains; I do have two screws in my hand.

The surgery went smoothly from my perspective—reclined. I was given a local block under the arm which entirely numbed everything below. They pulled the drape away for a few minutes for me to watch. I could see the broken bone and all the muscles around it. Neat’o.

I just took the wrapping off for the first time. I told the surgeon, who is a plastic one, to leave a noticeable scar. We’ll have to wait and see if he did a good job at leaving a bad scar. (It’s a guy thing.) The numbness is just about gone and I haven’t had to take any of my pain medication. In fact I haven’t taken aspirin of any type since the break happened. (It’s a guy thing. It sure is painful being a guy.) The preliminary ETH (Estimated Time of Healing) is four to six weeks, which translates to two to three weeks in Dan healing days. I’ll keep yaw’ll posted.

Consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to read this email in real-time. Typing with one hand isn’t what Dr. Dorvac had in mind when he came up with a new key-board lay-out. Writing my term papers is going to be tedious to the nth degree.

I have books to write and papers to read. (Quasi-spoonerism much?) (Question: how do you punctuate a rhetorical question? And what should one do about sentences which tell you they are going to ask a question and then go on to end in a question-mark? Isn’t that similar to a double negative?)

With that said, and asked, I will leave you.
Adieu, idano

Post Note: 12/2006
The healing process took far less time than I anticipated. I was typing with both hands the following day and playing basketball 3 days later.