Sorry, Folks. Got caught in charging hell and some details went down with devices dead as door-nails. Sequentially. The Apple laptop got hung up on something, iPhone cord got snapped in the hospital bed moving parts. Then the phone died and had to be dispatched to the nursing station in the next Zip Code. The iPad had provided a link but was good only for a couple blinks after having been reliably checked out on a multi-plug charging extension device I don’t claim to understand.

Now? Back up in communications arrived from another Zip Code, providing relief after some good medical news which was major!

A small conference followed that development with Rose, the Wound Nurse about the somewhat duller sheen over the deep incision. It was no longer bight red, but now a diffident shiny pink from my glimpse before the rectangular bandage slapped down. I would have a photo except for all the connectivity issues.

“Wound be closed,” she muttered from under the mask on her plump face. That resulted in recommendations, not all of them for me.

For instance, if some medical event involving surgeons beckons you, there are some things you need to understand. You are not “going to the hospital” as a destination unless it is something that can be set or wrapped or drained in a few days. If you are going for something with a recovery period expected to last longer, certainly more than a week, you are going to someplace different.

There will be a day under the blade with the Docs you know and mostly trust. Then a follow-up until the blood clots up. But those fancy hospital beds are valuable. What will actually follow is not “going to the hospital” but rather to another one or two industrial facilities which operate under a variety of names.

I don’t recall the one I was in after they amputated my toes, but it could have been the one in which I have spent the last six weeks. Or longer. Surgery was January, right?

These months have been in Woodbine, with my mental acuity, such as it is, returning five or six weeks ago. It is called a “Skilled Nursing Rehabilitation Center. (SNRC).” In some jurisdictions you could get less time for sticking up a 7-11. Sorry if you have heard that and most places you would get longer. I will grant them that, but they have no human connection to your Doctor, or your case.

They are simply a warehouse to provide care if you shout loud enough for it. They operate under their own procedures and not much of it has more to do with you than keeping the vitals collected at erratic times around the clock and medication sufficient to prevent escape.

Those are some of the things to be prepared for you won’t have time to plan for in the hoorah of “going to the hospital,” which as I have mentioned is probably not where you are actually going for most of the time you are going to be gone.

Your Doctor or other support personnel are separated from you by the SNRC. They have some “notification” process not available to a patient suddenly awakening in a two or three person shared-suite staffed by a variety of skilled personnel not from North America

Beware of these places in the EXTREME. They are intended to support life- after a fashion- once the immediate high quality hospital or surgical intervention has been completed and stabilized. For example, the deep surgical intervention in my upper groin has only been pronounced “fully healed over” this morning by the wound nurse, a charming woman whose English is not thick enough to saw wood.

Also, be clear on durations of expected recovery. In my case, “healed’ is a term referring only to the one wound of primary concern and not the ones incurred in the struggle for release. I think my case was fairly difficult in the spectrum requiring skilled intervention over time, which is to say, “Very Good” but short term, to “certified but average” over a period of time. There are longer periods and worse places, of course.

There was some discussion about that this morning between the providers of care and the variety of labor and logistics issues, and the fact that I had been in Ward 1 F longer than any of the staff currently on duty. Any problems I am describing are of course my own and a result of not understanding what what was about to happen to mw in terms of recovery warehousing.

In my defense, and not intentionally dramatic, the decision to undergo the remarkable medical event was made after time-to-amputation of the legs was the topic of discussion.

A very old and dear pal swung by the suite today and made a referral to an Office in the Department of Health and Human Services intended to handle people who require dramatic intervention possibly at the hands of a government not fully intending to slay us. At least at the onset of the adventure.

it was a nice chat, and hopes arose for a nice cruise with pleasant companions in the waters south of Chile and Argentina. Something with a pleasant view from amidships. But that will have to wait for the sequential edition of this adventure. With the pleasant news of the successful closure of skin over the very deep incision, today marks a “day of closure.”

Regrettably, it is not a day of full-on healing. Therapist Mohammed appeared to see what sort of repetitive indignities he could offer in the effort to permit me to walk again while avoiding the gush of bright red blood that accompanied his ministrations after the Tour of the Trillium on Monday.

I pay attention because he has the ability to recommend additional Therapy sessions at Woodbine before I can be seated in a small living room at the Trillium gazing out at mountains in the distance with something crisp in a tall glass and without public service announcements or nursing calls ringing from the speaker hung from the ceiling in mid-room.

So, although the main wound has closed and prognosis is guarded but good, I am not out of here yet. The anti-coagulants they have pumped into my blood stream to prevent clotting has also made sudden and dramatic cascades of crimson common with even the most casual scratch or scrape. That last swim at Big Pink in which my blood cast a distinct hue along the entire bottom of the deep end will always be showcased in my aquatic memory.

But there are more adventures to come in furnishing a new place with a new view and hopefully a brisk pace toward recovery and some time in the new outdoor pool at the Trillium.

I don’t know how many more days there are until I am free, or at least until my days are measured in newer metrics. But with the flesh now mostly sealed, we have to say right on, you know?

Forward!

V/R,
JR