A Few Words from the Man Himself

Here are more entries from the table top diary:

April 30, '09 Thursday (0)
05:30 Fed the dog and let him out.
Today's headline: “Swine flu found here!” (in King & Kitsap counties; also one case in Spokane). Geez! It only took four days to get here from Mexico. I fail to see the significance of a virus, which has been with us for so long a time, suddenly advanced to front page, world-wide epidemic status. Must be a slow news day or another media attempt to sow panic and thereby reap newspaper sales. The only thing about it that's out of the ordinary is timing. Flu season is “supposed” to occur in the fall and winter; presumably then, it has merely failed to stick to its approved schedule. Hmm. Not a very dramatic headline.
In reality I'm only griping about it because Mary and I are off to spend the next 24 hours at Swedish Hospital to get my bladder reamed out. Today is the end of the countdown and therefore a great relief to me as I was wondering if I would make it without incurring a premature medical emergency.
JD and Drew are in charge of the house and the Pup pup in our absence which hopefully will get us home by tomorrow afternoon.

May 1st, '09 Friday
Yesterday was a long day. Mary and I made our 1:00 p.m. deadline at Swedish for pre-operative prepping, making sure the paperwork was in order, meeting with the anesthesiologist and Dr. Lilly plus the various nurses for I.V. insertion, etc.
They wheeled me into the O.R. and the next thing I remember was waking up 2-1/2 hours later in a post-op recovery room with no more bladder monster!
I was treated to a delightful, light-headed gurney ride to room 218 where I met up with Mary and got to have some cranberry juice and the first food of the day – fish and chips!
Mary and I had a restless night, her with an uncomfortable cot to sleep on and me with a crampy bladder that wouldn't let me sleep.
At 07:30 Doc Lilly came in, fairly pleased with how the surgery had gone, and loaded my bladder with as much saline as it could hold and then watched the Foley bag fill to the volume he had deposited before pulling the catheter and de-Foley-ating me. I was now in the hands of Leah Cheung, the floor nurse who began a merciless program of administering fluids and measuring the amount I peed out. Finally, Leah pronounced me functional, even though it took me most of the morning and enough water to float a boat.
By the time we got home, I was peeing almost non-stop. That's how the rest of the day was spent. By then, the phone calls from well-wishers were coming in non-stop as well so I began taking the phone with me into the bathroom.

May 2, '09, Sat.
This morning the newspaper asks itself: Is this really a world-wide killer swine flu pandemic or just a lot of premature paranoid raving?
Well, since they asked, I vote for a third choice: unnecessary, irresponsible fear-mongering with a big dose of profit motive.

May 3rd, '09, Sunday
Story in the paper today. The U.W.'s Dept of Communications gave up its telephone land lines. Apparently hardly anyone uses them anymore so they're being eliminated as an unnecessary expense.
With everyone using email, gmail, texting and twittering, the use of vocal communication may become obsolete someday. I'm all for it. For years I've wished that people would just shut up. The thought that vocal cords may someday shrivel up and disappear is a little disturbing, though.