I’m back! I’m alive! Turns out I didn’t need that morbid list after all… 🙂

    So I’ve been trying over the past few days to write a cohesive explanation of what I’ve been up to since the operation on Wednesday, how the recovery process has been going, how spectacular my surgeon was, how spectacular my amazing technicolor bruises are, and what it was like to spend a few days in the hospital with an IV line in my jugular vein (I didn’t even know they could do that! Ewwwww!) But as much as I’ve tried, it just never seems to make much sense. O the familiar perils of being doped up on serious pain medication.

    I’m afraid that means you won’t be getting much of a report this time around. I just had to post something, though, and let you all know that not only am I alive, but that the operation went much, much, much better than I anticipated. Heck, it even went better than my doctor had anticipated! When he came to see me in the hospital a few days after the operation, he was positively giddy as he was explaining how everything went in the operating room. He’s not only thrilled with how well my body has handled the extensive liposuction, but with how rapidly the flesh itself has recovered. My body has handled the beating so well that the doc thinks we may even be able to speed this entire process up. Right now we have the operations spaced about five/six weeks apart, but if my body continues to recover so quickly, we may be able to cut the wait down to only three or four weeks between sessions. We’ll know more on Friday when I go in for a post-op check up. I can’t wait and I really hope the doc’s expectations are spot on, because the faster we can operate, the sooner I’ll be back to life as normal. And, more importantly, if we can cut down on the time between operations, that will give my body less time to grow in the mean time. I gained so much weight between the past two operations that it almost made the first surgery obsolete. This time around I had to have my right thigh operated on *again* because so much of the diseased fat had grown back. If we can get ahead of the growth and get rid of it, I’ll have a better chance of keeping it at bay for a longer period of time.

    As far as my pain is concerned, as bad as it still is, it’s nowhere near as bad as it was after the first operation. Right now I’d say my pain level is comparable to when I was about four weeks out from the first operation, if that makes sense. That’s a huge leap forward and such a massive relief. I’m still taking enough to put an elephant to sleep and my oh my it’s making me loopy, but at least I don’t feel like ripping my hair out every second of the day. After the first operation I couldn’t stand to get out of bed for about three or four days to use the restroom; this time around, I was able to grit my teeth and hobble to the bathroom only a few hours after surgery. Granted, I still look a bit pathetic when I get up – I can’t manage to stand up all the way, and it hurts too badly to straighten my leg, thus hunching me over and causing me to walk with a bizarre bend to my knee. Putting all my weight on my right foot is out of the question, so I gingerly walk on toe-point, making me feel like a grotesque mix of Quasimodo and Cyd Charisse. But hey, at least I’m up and using the potty like a big girl! And I’m sure you wanted to know that…

    Anyway, I should really wrap this up, because it’s time for another round of medication and my train of thought is quickly derailing. Two last things, and then it’s off to dreamyland for me. First, I have a teensy bit of sad news. The winners of the American Express 15 Second Film Festival were finally announced about a week late. Jay and I have been waiting on pins and needles, but alas, we didn’t make the cut. Apparently the judges felt we weren’t even worthy to be counted amongst the 100 iPod-winning finalists. I was a little surprised, but I had prepared myself for this eventuality because, really, video contests are especially subjective.

    But on the other hand, I can’t help but be a bit miffed that while our effort wasn’t worthy, two entries that were blatantly against the rules were held in higher regard than our entry. The rules said that the videos had to be rated PG, and yet one of them contained images of a woman’s nude bottom. As bad as that is, it’s nowhere near as annoying as another video that was basically stolen from Turner Classic Movies – some guy had submitted an animated video of New York, but he just stole a 15 second bumper from TCM and augmented it a little, inserting images of himself whilst carefully removing the TCM logo. Sure, my video wasn’t perfect, but at least it was my own. I think I have that bumper recorded somewhere, I wonder if I could find it…

    Ah well. I wasn’t as disappointed over losing as I thought I might be. The biggest disappointment for me was that I couldn’t win that iPod for Jay. He gave up so much of his time to help me with the video; I really appreciated his sacrifice and I really wanted to thank him with a pretty new iPod. After having recieved one from my fabulous friend, Sabbrielle, I know how happy her gift made me, and I wanted to do that for Jay with the pretty Tribeca Film Festival iPod. Other than that disappointment, eh, winning would have been nice, but I had so much fun making the video, that I’m still happy. I’ll just have to come up with another way to thank him.

    Speaking of that, that’s the final bit for this blog – many thanks to Jay for being my guest blogger over the past few days. He’s only the second person I’ve ever allowed to post here, but I wanted to make sure that after all my morbid entries, someone would be around to let everyone know that I made it through surgery, that I was alive, and so on and so forth. He did just that and did it very well, and for that I am very grateful. So hooray, Jay wins a cookie! 🙂

    That’s it for now, I need to go crash now. Ugh, pain, bruises, and loopiness! I hope this entry has at least made a little sense… I’ll try to post another one soon enough – there’s so much I want to say, so much I want to talk about, and yet my brain just isn’t cooperating. So more later, but for now, sleep! Mmm, sleep.