Hobgoblin.

I feel shrunken and diminished and disconnected lying here in bed with my eyes all tired red and swollen. I stare sideways at the computer screen, typing with only my left hand and operating the mouse buttons backwards. Sleep eludes me, yet my projects fail to thrill me. I feel bored and listless and crabby... I feel as though I've been cheated.

Cheated out of what, I don't know. I've spent large portions of today and last night crawling through Better Than Sex by the immortal Hunter S. Thompson and working on a style for this livejournal. I've been getting around four hours of sleep a night, and when the sleep does come, it hits me like a freight train and drops me where I stand. For two or three hours, I lay motionless, and am pelted with strange and frantic dreams. And then I wake up, sluggish and gasping; aching and bloody-eyed, just to lay here restless and sleepless again.

Tomorrow, the bandages come off. I'm half-afraid that the inciion will appear as a torn, gaping wound, having been pulled open by my moderate activities over the last few days. Intellectually, I'm fairly certain that this will not be the case, but that nagging self-doubt continues to taint everthing I do and spawn fear and dread.

(no subject)

<td>

You're the epitome of insane. Either you're very smart, or you're too damn stupid. The world is your playground, and everything -- and everyone -- in it is a toy for you to play with. People should be scared of you, but because you're so affable, they aren't. Tough for them. </td>

New Years Eve.

Hello, everyone. I hope you're all having a good new years eve, or have had a good one, depending on your timezone. Mine has been a boring piece of crap, all in all, mainly because all my partyability is limited by my recent surgery.

I know, you're all sick to death of hearing about it. Tough!

Today was another interesting day. I got up after about four hours of sleep, and went into the bathroom to peel the dressing off of my butt. The thing is a huge construction of gauze and foam tape, and resembles half of a diaper, covering a huge portion of my rear-end. Wisdom seconded this opinion. It took some tugging and pulling, as the tape was stubborn and the removal painful, but I got the thing off and tossed it in the garbage can.

Next on my list of post-surgical instructions was hot baths, 2-3 times a day. Now, the guys here shower, they don't take baths, so needless to say the tub itself was suffering from some neglect and was far too dirty to bathe a surgical wound in. Joe and Susan agreed to pick up a jug of bleach for me while they were out, and so I waited for them to get back.

While I waited I put on my responsible hat and bought myself some auto insurance. A little more than what's legally required, plus roadside assistance, came out to about sixty dollars a month. Wonderful!

After Joe and Susan got home, I filled the tub with water, added a cup of bleach, and let it sit for a while. What better way to disinfect? I then rinsed the tub thouroughly and took my warm bath. This was not a bath for getting clean; in fact, no soaps or bubbles or shampoos were allowed in the water, lest they enter the wound and cause problems. So I just lay back and soaked for around twenty-five minutes, and then washed my hair while kneeling in the tub to keep my incision out of the water and free from pollutants.

All well and good, huh?

It wasn't till later that I realized that I actually had two dressings over the wound, one a small sticky plastic affair under the bulky half-diaper.

Now that one was a pain to get off!

I seem to be feeling much better, though... as my use of painkillers has decreased, I find myself more lucid than I've been for days. And a good shampooing does wonders for one's morale! The surgical site is slightly more painful without the protection of the bandages, but that seems pretty normal to me. I'll call my doctor tomorrow just to check in, though.

Happy 2002, everyone!