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Thanks, chaps, for the well wishes.
So many of you blokes have been PM-ing me, I thought I'd just post about my travails and be done with it rather than sing my sad song several times, individually.
The Marvels of Modern Medicine!
I'd been having numerous problems the past couple of months, went to see my physician, was prodded, probed, pierced, and pronounced the possessor of a problem pear-shaped part: namely, my gall bladder. Apparently it had stopped bladding galls and instead begun collecting numerous various sized bile stones instead. Additionally, the membrane walls were thickening, a bad thing, according to my health care advisors. The recommendation was to have it removed forthwith (fifthwith, considering inflation) since, if I waited, the prognosis was that I would end up in the emergency room having it removed anyway. I acquiesced and found a cutter who had a break in his golf schedule and could perform the surgery without delay.
Now, in the olden daze, removal of an organ involved slicing you from chin to groin, spreading you open, reaching in and scooping out any of the bad bits, stuffing the remainder back inside, sewing you up, and then waiting to see if you survived the trauma.
Not so any more!
With the new technology and the advances in medical practice, instead of laying your insides bare to the world, they now perform medical miracles laparoscopically. So, now, rather than cutting you open as if you were being autopsied, they instead make three small incisions into which they insert 1) a device for pumping you full of carbon dioxide to inflate you like a balloon, 2) a nice, bright light so they can see which bits they might want to play with, and 3) a medieval torture device designed to snip, mangle, and extricate anything they decide is unworthy of remaining inside your body. The whole procedure can be done in the time it takes to knock off a bucket of balls on the driving range and the observed results are three band aids on the abdomen. That's it!
My case was slightly complicated by the discovery of a small hernia in the vicinity of my lint catcher (i.e. belly button), which they agreed to patch up at the same time; a two-fer, if you will. Thus, in addition to the three aforementioned band aids, I also had a small bandage on my navel.
Due to my advanced age, the fact that I also have sleep apnea, and the eternal fear of being sued, they wanted to keep me overnight for observation. But I was so insufferably bored in hospital that I made myself an intolerable pain in the ass to anyone I could harass and succeeded in escaping from their clutches the evening of my surgery (unfortunately only after consenting to a nasty procedure which consists of stuffing a tube the diameter of a fire hose up the ol' winkie to drain the bladder which seems to have gone on strike sometime during the invasion of the body smashers).
Remarkable.
No, not the fact that modern surgery is like building a ship in a bottle, rather that even with the significant reduction in cutting and blood they have managed to somehow retain -- if not increase -- the level of PAIN!
My willie felt like it was on fire, the three band aids felt like they were covering incisions made with scimitars which were still in situ, and my poor little lint collector felt like it was being used as the boiler of a steam engine! And GHODZ ABOVE HELP ME should I need to cough! Coughing made the middle third of my body try to expand to roughly the size of the Von Hindenburg and felt like I would literally explode if I didn't fiercely clutch my central area with my arms and hands to keep it from making an ugly mess on the walls of any area I happened to be occupying. And THE PAIN! SHEEEEEEE-ITTTTTTTT! I was given a goodly supply of percocets which ordinarily serve me in good stead. Now; however, I was popping them like candy and it was barely keeping me at about the threshold of eternal torture in the bowels of hell.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, boys and girls.
It is now the third day after surgery and it only hurts if I breathe, so I am much improved.
Again, I want to thank all the well-wishers (who I know were all secretly hoping I would croak so that my stash of stogies could be distributed amongst them) and am happy to be back "on the air" in my favorite forum on the whole internet (already in progress).
So many of you blokes have been PM-ing me, I thought I'd just post about my travails and be done with it rather than sing my sad song several times, individually.
The Marvels of Modern Medicine!
I'd been having numerous problems the past couple of months, went to see my physician, was prodded, probed, pierced, and pronounced the possessor of a problem pear-shaped part: namely, my gall bladder. Apparently it had stopped bladding galls and instead begun collecting numerous various sized bile stones instead. Additionally, the membrane walls were thickening, a bad thing, according to my health care advisors. The recommendation was to have it removed forthwith (fifthwith, considering inflation) since, if I waited, the prognosis was that I would end up in the emergency room having it removed anyway. I acquiesced and found a cutter who had a break in his golf schedule and could perform the surgery without delay.
Now, in the olden daze, removal of an organ involved slicing you from chin to groin, spreading you open, reaching in and scooping out any of the bad bits, stuffing the remainder back inside, sewing you up, and then waiting to see if you survived the trauma.
Not so any more!
With the new technology and the advances in medical practice, instead of laying your insides bare to the world, they now perform medical miracles laparoscopically. So, now, rather than cutting you open as if you were being autopsied, they instead make three small incisions into which they insert 1) a device for pumping you full of carbon dioxide to inflate you like a balloon, 2) a nice, bright light so they can see which bits they might want to play with, and 3) a medieval torture device designed to snip, mangle, and extricate anything they decide is unworthy of remaining inside your body. The whole procedure can be done in the time it takes to knock off a bucket of balls on the driving range and the observed results are three band aids on the abdomen. That's it!
My case was slightly complicated by the discovery of a small hernia in the vicinity of my lint catcher (i.e. belly button), which they agreed to patch up at the same time; a two-fer, if you will. Thus, in addition to the three aforementioned band aids, I also had a small bandage on my navel.
Due to my advanced age, the fact that I also have sleep apnea, and the eternal fear of being sued, they wanted to keep me overnight for observation. But I was so insufferably bored in hospital that I made myself an intolerable pain in the ass to anyone I could harass and succeeded in escaping from their clutches the evening of my surgery (unfortunately only after consenting to a nasty procedure which consists of stuffing a tube the diameter of a fire hose up the ol' winkie to drain the bladder which seems to have gone on strike sometime during the invasion of the body smashers).
Remarkable.
No, not the fact that modern surgery is like building a ship in a bottle, rather that even with the significant reduction in cutting and blood they have managed to somehow retain -- if not increase -- the level of PAIN!
My willie felt like it was on fire, the three band aids felt like they were covering incisions made with scimitars which were still in situ, and my poor little lint collector felt like it was being used as the boiler of a steam engine! And GHODZ ABOVE HELP ME should I need to cough! Coughing made the middle third of my body try to expand to roughly the size of the Von Hindenburg and felt like I would literally explode if I didn't fiercely clutch my central area with my arms and hands to keep it from making an ugly mess on the walls of any area I happened to be occupying. And THE PAIN! SHEEEEEEE-ITTTTTTTT! I was given a goodly supply of percocets which ordinarily serve me in good stead. Now; however, I was popping them like candy and it was barely keeping me at about the threshold of eternal torture in the bowels of hell.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, boys and girls.
It is now the third day after surgery and it only hurts if I breathe, so I am much improved.
Again, I want to thank all the well-wishers (who I know were all secretly hoping I would croak so that my stash of stogies could be distributed amongst them) and am happy to be back "on the air" in my favorite forum on the whole internet (already in progress).
Keep holding on when you cough, fart or sneeze mate. You can trust me: my consultant's and locum surgeon's assistant told me 
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