Time for a Time Out: A Personal Note to Readers
I am taking a few days off from posting stories.
Our daughter is getting married this weekend in Texas. It will be a joyous (outdoor) occasion, attended by friends and family from all over the country. Wearing a suit after years of jeans and tees should be an interesting experience.
I’ll be back next Wednesday, April 13th for a couple of weeks.
Then… I’m not sure. I’m going in for reconstructive surgery –-version 5.0 !– since my cancer was removed in December 2020 on April 28.
Suffice it to say things haven’t worked out like I’d hoped. I’m living on tube-fed formula and use a white board to communicate.
It’s been a painful and frustrating experience, made tolerable by way of the hope that the next trip to the operating room would resolve the problems, and the support of my wife.
We’ve learned a lot about navigating the healthcare system. Everybody has been kind and competent. Despite cloud-based records, sometimes it seems as if the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Not being able to speak really sucks in those situations.
This time around the surgeons at UCSD will be trying to fix things in a different way involving transplanting part of my lower intestine. I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details; it’s major surgery.
I’m not going to try and predict how long I’ll be gone starting later this month. Just know that I will be back as soon as I can manage it.
Doug P.