Where I've been

At the moment, I have a hole in my belly where I do most—but not all!—of my pooping and farting. It's a colostomy. It's also temporary, knock on wood. And it's why I've been absent from my own blog the last two weeks.

There is no official diagnosis: the main suspect is diverticulitis. The surgery that gave me the hole in my belly wasn't trying to fix any underlying problems—it was simply trying to ease the pressure on a gastrointestinal system that was so distended that the blood supply to critical organs was in jeopardy. A colonoscopy and two more surgeries await me. I've been in such pain, post-surgery, that I'm not really happy at the prospect. Gotta get fixed, though.

Absent an official diagnosis, I'm full of self-recrimination, suspecting that a lifetime of bad decisions about my health and life have led inexorably to this moment. I am being judged. And I am judging myself. My uncertainty—and I'm self-aware enough to know this is all probably just post-op depression talking—is wide enough to encompass nearly all the choices I've made the last two decades. I have a loving wife, and a beautiful son, both of whom are burdened by my circumstances. I feel this keenly.

So I don't know what this blog will be for the next couple of months, given A) that my life will be dominated by medical events and B) I've not been able to sustain the attention span for an entire Sports Illustrated article lately, much less keep up with the nuances of politics. And beyond this, I'm not sure what the blog will be anymore because I'm not certain who I will be anymore. This is re-evaluation time: I must ensure that I am living a creditable life. Anything that doesn't add to the balance probably goes by the wayside.