Notes from surgery: Pain, then the sponge bath

There are almost no visual components to the memories of my first waking moments after surgery. Mostly, I suspect, this is because I was still pretty doped up—and thus mostly unable to open my eyes. What's left is a mishmash of sound and pain.

Pain. I knew before I was even told that the doctor had made two holes in my body, because I could feel them both, individually, one on top of the other on my abdomen, two fingers of fire—no, something worse than fire, because fire can be extinguished and there was nothing to the intensity of agony in my belly that suggested a temporary nature. I screamed—or tried to at least. Most likely I grunted angrily.

It was going to get worse: I still needed to be transferred from the operating table to a recuperation bed. I could hear the nurses around me talking–male and female voices mixing together in a kind of urgent incoherence—and then the sheet below me tighten in a one-two-three! movement to lift me to my new repose. It squeezed my wounds a little. I screamed. "YOU'RE HURTING ME!" I wanted to say, but I don't think I managed actual speech.

And then: blackness.

Soon after, though, a new sensation emerged. I still hurt, still hurt too much to want to endure or survive. But then the sponge touched my skin: someone was cleaning me, a soothing touch in the midst of misery. Along my left leg, up the calf and thigh. And then, finally, up from there. The post-surgical moment when I first thought I might survive occurred when a nurse—whose face I've still never seen, I don't think—oh-so-briefly washed my balls.

There's nothing erotic to this. But the pain had been so thorough, so penetrating—and the warm, sudsy sponge against my testacles made me feel ... loved. And then, blackness again.

Something similar would happen over my next few days in the hospital. Young men wiped my ass. Older women washed me all over. A beautiful young Indian woman showed me how to empty the shit from the bag on my stomach. At one point on my last day—seriously, I'm not making this up—a woman washed my feet while singing Negro spirituals. It was a resonant moment—possibly slightly absurd, but it felt resonant—that did not get me to return to the Christianity of my youth. But that's as clean a shot as anybody will get, most likely.

Losing control over these basic functions, I guess, should make me angry on some level. But for whatever reason, I resigned myself pretty quickly to the idea that I didn't have control of this situation. And so I accepted it: Every ass-wipe was a gift, a step closer to home and recovery.

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.

The Daily News' Howard Gensler treats sex assault like a joke

I guess that gossip columnists are supposed to be a guilty pleasure, but there's nothing really pleasurable about the scribblings of Howard Gensler at the Philadelphia Daily News. I've not got the energy to go back and round up links of what I consider the routine misogyny he displays in his column. Instead, I'll just go ahead and say that today's entry is pretty representative of Gensler's work:

LENNY DYKSTRA may no longer be playing baseball, but he still likes to take his bat out of the rack.

In December, Lenny was accused of bouncing a $1,000 check to a female escort. In January, he was accused of sexual assault by his housekeeper, who claimed that Lenny had forced her to provide weekly oral sexual favors. The Los Angeles Times quoted her as saying she "needed the job and the money" so she went along with Lenny's requests.

Lenny always could get to third base.

Haha! Third base! A baseball joke! Get it! Because forced sexual assault is funny!

Me? I think it's a real problem when a major metropolitan daily newspaper gives regular space to a columnist who comments on sexual assault with frat-boy humor——and that's when he's not treating women with contempt generally. It signals to the broader readership the acceptability of "boys will be boys" behavior and reinforces the atmosphere that permits the Dykstras of the world to do their ugly stuff. Even by the low standards of a gossip column, Howard Gensler is loathsome.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: One minute of boy's monologue while playing with his trucks

"Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You're welcome so much. Good job! Thank you! THANK YOU SO MUCH! Beep beep beep beep."

Stairs

Taken at Schuylkill River Park

Jo and T

Taken at Schuylkill River Park

The rich are not unduly burdened by taxes (A continuing series)

Via Paul Krugman, a chart that reminds us the rich aren't unduly burdened by taxes:

On a related note, there's been a lot of effort lately from my conservative friends to assert that merely raising taxes on the rich won't solve America's long-term deficit problem. And you know what? I think they're right! The middle class is going to have to ante up a bit if it wants to maintain some of the services it likes so much. So if Dems suggest they can pay for everything simply by larding up marginal tax rates, well, they're probably wrong or lying.

However...

It's also true that the effective tax rates on the super-rich are the lowest they've been in recent memory. And it's true we face a long-term deficit problem. And it's also true that we were digging ourselves out of debt under the Clinton-era marginal tax rates that are slightly higher than they are now. But it's also true that the Republican plan going forward is to ... further reduce taxes on the rich.

That's silly. Maybe we can't fix everything by soaking the rich. But it's just as dubious to think we can solve our problems by letting them off the hook for their portion of supporting our government.