I think I'll keep it, thanks

Second to last visit with Dr. Brand today. Only waited 30 minutes this time.

He said the wound looked "spectacular" and that he was very pleased with my progress. I no longer have to wear gauze in my ass, but I think I'll keep wrapping my hips in ace bandage - it helps me fit in my pants better. I'm still easily tired, but I'm very glad to hear Dr. Brand so positive.

It was very hard to be at Lesley and Sean's wedding and not dance, but it was a lovely, lovely ceremony.

As happens all the time at the pilonidal.org message boards, I'll be posting even less frequently as I go on. I have an appointment with Dr. Brand in a month when he will hopefully give me a clean bill of health. Until then, I will try to stay healthy and spend less time worried about my ass.

Sorry but it's not much

Really, there's not much to report.

I feel fine, I move around, then I feel really, really tired. I'm having trouble distinguishing between needing to rest and space out to heal my wound and being lazy. They're not mutually exclusive, but I'm definitely a give an inch take a mile kind of guy and if I'm not uptight with myself about timing and responsibility I can go very slack very fast. I am slooooowly picking up schoolwork, but I'm still unable to sit in a chair for very long, so I'm allowing that to be the reason I'm not doing a lot of reading and typing for my conference paper that's due in two weeks (yikes!).

But I'm finally able to get around more, which means making dinner for my wife and doing the dishes when she makes me dinner. That feels good. I could also have my first sip of alcohol in two weeks and I had a tumbler of Jack Daniels, which tasted like paint. What the! Do I have to re-acclimate myself to hard alcohol? I hope not. If so, I may just have to go to some really good stuff, get some Knob Creek or Sazerac and work my way backwards instead of gritting through the lower range stuff. Wine tastes fine. Of course I'm being sparing with the alcohol: it thins the blood, which doesn't help healing any, and well, I can't imagine it does much for the body's recuperative powers at all.

A mixed blessing arrived two days ago: the Planet Earth series started rolling in from Netflix. As with all their really desirable movies, you have to wait many, many weeks to get this, and I had hoped to have them during my convalescence. Alas. But the good news is that now I can be sure to watch them with my wife, which is a lot more fun. And the better news is, these things are unbe-friggin-lievable. We've been absolutely filled with awe, real awe, at the staggering power and beauty of this planet. We can't recommend these things highly enough.

We're off to a dear friend's wedding this weekend. I'm usually a dancing fool, but I've been given strict orders prohibiting me from doing so. That'll be really rough, especially since this friend totally got down with us at our wedding. She'll understand, I'm sure, but it's not going to be easy for me to watch my friends boogeying while I can't move. I'm looking forward to getting out of Chicago, but I'm nervous about the effect of the travel on me. Two and half hours in the car won't feel so hot for my ass is what I'm thinking. I hope it's okay, since once we come back, I will be thrust into school whether I like it or not: lots of meetings to kick off the year and then classes start the following week.

And so yeah: rent Planet Earth by the BBC.

A skipped post

Yesterday I ran some errands and wound up far more pooped than expected and so I didn't write a post. I also did some work and tried to end an argument my father's been trying to provoke me into having with him. And I learned that a dear friend of mine from college is very pregnant and has breast cancer.

Sure makes my chapped ass seem inconsequential.

My recovery is going well, though. I was taken by surprise at how tired driving to school and back made me, but the wound itself seems to be doing well. I guess I need to take it easier than I had hoped. Even though the wound is healing well, my body has still suffered a trauma. I've also gone from being at least moderately active to not active at all.

I still can't shower because the tube entry point hasn't scabbed over, but one more day shouldn't kill me. Still, I can't wait to take a shower.

I'm going to lie down again.

Next step

They did it again, but this time it was longer. We were scheduled to see Dr. Brand on a day when he was in surgery all day, which is no good for him or for us. We waited 2 hours and 40 minutes before we saw him. The travel Scrabble was a huge help, but as soon as the front desk woman started giving us attitude (I was asking for the third time in 2 hours what the doctor's ETA was) I began to feel pretty stir-crazy. Amazing how that works: I was actually okay with waiting for hours but when I was treated without compassion, my outlook dimmed. All told, we were in the hospital complex from 10:45 - 3:10, only 15 minutes of which were spent with Dr. Brand. Better than in most parts of the world, I'm sure, but an unpleasant experience for someone used to living in this part of it. And but so the bandages have been changed and my ass wound is doing great and my wife tells me the scar, while long, is actually very narrow and clean. I haven't gotten to see it yet, but will have her take a photo tomorrow morning when we change the bandage. Right: I have to let the hole where the tube was scab over before I can get it wet, so I can't shower yet. That was not happy news. I'm now hoping that by Wednesday I can once again step under the shower. That'll be a great feeling.

Dr. Brand seemed genuinely pleased with the progress of the wound's healing and he took me off the antibiotics. From now on, I just have some gauze stuffed in my crack with a little tape and now the ace bandage provides the primary pressure keeping the cheeks together. Have I mentioned how weird this makes pooping?

The ride home was not great, but I actually sat at my desk for an hour or so this early evening and that was a good feeling. I'm back on the pull out couch now, but I have hopes that I'll be able to start working tomorrow for more than a little bit. Earlier I actually did some work on my syllabus and my theatre company's files, and that was nice. Some amazing people have auditioned for us over the years.

So yes. Feeling very upbeat after getting out of the doctor's office and the positive assessment by Dr. Brand, who really needs to work less. When I explained to my wife that one of the drawbacks of working with a surgeon as in demand as Dr. Brand was that we had to wait to see him, she said, "Well if he's so great, why's he working like a chump?" I hadn't heard "chump" used seriously in ages and found that hilarious. Well, we both recognize he likely works this way because he loves it and is well compensated for it. We didn't succeed in getting the last follow up appointment made due to the front desk lady (don't even ask) and that makes me nervous, but hopefully in a little over a week I will be able to stop wearing the gauze and ace bandage. What I realized today, though, was that not much is going on healing wise. There's a scar and the tissue is trying to reform to the tailbone, but that's pretty much it. If we continue to take good care of me. But yeah, it was nice to realize that the only bandage I really have is some gauze back there to soak up any bleeding, and after today, that seems unlikely so long as I'm not careless. We'll see, but I feel a lot better.

What's outside blowing in

The reason Roger Federer is unstoppable, it seems to me having watched him very few times, but the last two times fight his away out of what seemed like inevitable losses against very strong opponents, the reason he's unstoppable is that he never flags. He never seems to surge, he just never really weakens. When an opponent breaks his serve or when he's down, it never seems to be because he's weak but because the opponent is playing out of his mind. That happened in the final at Wimbledon and today, and neither Rafa nor Djokovic could seal the deal because Federer wasn't weakened when he was down. His rhythm is almost inhuman. Lendl and Sampras also seemed to be almost machine-like, but they had downs and ups in their games, and Federer doesn't really seem to have that: he just moves and moves and moves on, leveling the best efforts of his opponents.

I like writing about sports as if I have the faintest idea what I'm writing about. Of course, it's apparent listening to some of the commentators today that one needn't have that faintest clue in order to be well compensated for making the inanest of inane comments during a game. I watched some football today, too, and it always blows me away how varied the quality in game calling can be. Joe Buck seems to be doing better than last year, Aiken is still weak and CBS has some winners and some losers, but there's absolutely no match for the expertise and enthusiasm of Michaels and Madden. They can make watching a boring game exciting, whereas with Buck and Aiken you just hope they don't ruin an exciting game (they did well with today's fierce matchup between the Bears and Chargers).

Anyhoo.

Today is a day I'd be out biking if it weren't for the ass surgery and it feels bad to know that all this glorious food my wife has been cooking for me will just go to my gut and I can't work it off. But with the windows open, the lovely air is blowing in and that makes the sick room much nicer. I absolutely adore cool air, particularly cool night air. The fall has some of my favorite weather by miles, most likely because I grew up in Massachusetts where the falls are crisp and colorful. A cliche, but a truth nonetheless.

Tomorrow the bandages are changed, the tube comes out, and I start a new regimen. I'm not looking forward to changing the bandages every morning, but I am looking forward to taking a real shower. I'm struggling with the false sense that once the tube comes out of the crack, I'll be able to sit and do work, but I know that's not true, I just want it to be. So I'm looking forward to tomorrow as if I'll be able to work tomorrow evening, when in fact, I'll just be bandaged differently, still unable to work and will still need to wait until Tuesday to shower. I'm guessing tomorrow will be a frustrating day also because we have an 11 o'clock appointment but we know Dr. Brand is scheduled to be in surgery all day and so we don't know how long we'll have to wait. The last time that happened, which was actually about a year ago, I waited two hours. I was reading The Brothers Karamazov and was in the middle of "Ivan's Nightmare" and thought I was going crazy with him. At least this time I'll have company and we'll come prepared with travel Scrabble. Anyway, I'm pulling the typical move of preparing to be frustrated so when we only wait an hour, it feels good, not bad. So even though tomorrow isn't likely to go how I want it to, I'm looking forward to some movement anyway.

Not quite ready for sitting

Still with the back problems. The lying about is not good for anyone, I'm sure, but I imagine it's worse the taller you are, and at 6'2" I'm getting up there. The most comfortable place to lie is my wife's massage table, but I can't do anything other than nap or hang out there.

I'm feeling like my ass shouldn't be in this much pain now. I still can't sit or lie on my back or lie propped up on my back. I feel like 3 days after the surgery I should be approaching that, but I"m probably just impatient, as usual. As a kid, I didn't want to have to learn the alphabet, I just wanted to read. I was told to take a week off from work, so I shouldn't expect to be able to sit before Wednesday I suppose. I was also told not to exercise for 6 weeks, and lord that will be hard for me. I'm not a big exercise nut, but I'm a biker and I was getting into going to the gym lately (which I'm sure had nothing to do with my imminent inability to work out). I feel a little pleased that not exercising for 6 weeks will mean something to me, but still . . . I feel feel like it'd be good for my body to get around.

Which is why my wife and I went for a walk this morning. Just around the neighborhood, but it was good to get out, even if I was limping like a pimp, or a bad impression of a dated and corrupted image of one anyway. I trust I didn't do anything untoward to my ass during that little jaunt.

Now off to Pynchon myself to sleep, hopefully.

Oh the boredom!

The worst part of this whole ordeal so far is the boredom. I can't sit and I'm a little too uncomfortable to read anything for school. Lying down in bed is okay, but lying on the pull out couch strains my back when I'm face down and strains my wound when I'm on my side. Plus, on my side it's hard to watch videos and either way it's hard to read any of the trashy mags my wife has provided for me. I want to work, but I can't, and I want to watch videos all day but that's not really comfortable either. I'm not in so much pain that I feel like I deserve to be unproductive, but I'm in enough to prevent me from being so. Very frustrating.

I don't want to close the night with a downer, so I'll add this:

Dr. Brand left a message (on my wife's voicemail for some reason) and it seems that I'm healing very well. He says this because we asked him what he made of the fact that I'm not really draining much from the wound (remember that tube connected to my ass?). So that's nice.

And today it was very stormy and rainy and that made for some great entertainment.

And my wife left a great dinner for me tonight since she was going out with some friends. As I wrote earlier, she's a healer by nature and by trade, but I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some bar-setting going on here, as in, letting me know by example the kind of care that I need to provide when she's pregnant. (I'm kidding honey!) She would never act that way. But I am taking note and hopefully she can feel this taken care of some day.

Story told by my mom: she's pregnant and awake in the middle of the night and needs ice cream. My dad goes out into the city to get it. He comes back, victorious. She frowns. "On a stick." And he goes back out again.

A hydrocodone post

Woke up this morning in pain from the wound. Also a headache. It's dark and kind of rainy out, which on the one hand helps stoke the self-pity, but on the other hand makes me feel a little better about being immobilized because what I really miss is biking and I wouldn't be doing that in this weather anyway. Not that I want bad weather for the next 5 weeks, but it's easier to not miss doing something when you couldn't do it anyway.

Damn my ass hurts. (It does, a lot, but I'm also obligated to write "ass" at least once in each post.)

I took a hydrocodone last night (and for those of you keeping score, hydrocodone is basically vicodin) and one the first day, but I'm nervous about using them. There's a pride issue, since I've read on the pilonidal.org forums of several people who had this procedure and didn't take any pain medication. I've never been invested in being a tough guy, but I do find myself wanting to not need or want pain medication. So there's that. And connected to that is the fear that if I need pain medication, prescription pain medication, then I'm not healing properly or as quickly or as well as I should or want to. I've been fairly mobile around the house, and shifting around on our pull-out couch where I've been set up in the most lavish sick-room style (1 small table for the new Pynchon book I won't finish, my Sigg water bottle [the colored Nalgene ones are bad for you, it turns out], my meds, and my phone, 1 small table for the books and articles I'm to use to finish the conference paper on Steven Berkoff's choruses that I won't actually be working on in this condition, a lap desk for my laptop [I'm not sitting to use it, but placing it on the floor so I can type lying off the edge of the bed], a basket full of magazines, gum, and SweetTarts, the TV turned towards the couch, and remotes somewhere on this bed amongst all the pillows. Did I mention that my wife is a champ? This morning she left me the new Doonesbury collection, "Heckuva Job, Bushie!" She's a healer by nature and now by trade [not "now" as in with her husband laid up, but "now" as in she is a massage therapist and energy healer and is writing her Master's DMT thesis on PTSD.]). So yes. I'm quite set up, but I fear that I've been moving too much and that this is why I'm in pain.

There's also the fact that I used to smoke, sometimes don't monitor my alcohol intake, and am generally obsessive compulsive. Not clinically OCD, but if there's something I want to purchase that's over $50, I will spend weeks researching it, trying it on, thinking about it, making jokes to my wife about it, until finally I get rid of the idea of owning it or I break down and get it, making sure to spend at least a week feeling weird about having it before moving on to enjoy it. Type of thing. So I'm nervous about becoming hooked on hydrocodone, which is, as the assuredly reliable Wikipedia informs me, a habit-forming drug. Which it very well would be, seeing as how it's an opioid. (Poor thing: no "-oid" was ever respected in high school. Only the opiates ever got any. The "-oid" I'm assuming denotes that it's a synthetic drug, as opposed to the opiates, which are derived from the plant. Hence the getting more action. Where is this bit going?

It's going to take a hydrocodone and watch some Simpson's.)

The Poo Post

Don't read further if you don't want to read about poo. About me pooing. For some of you, reading about the first would not be, in principle, so objectionable, but reading about the second would be. Just know that I'm about to write about the second one.

Not easy. Sitting on the can is tricky and pushing is weird since I'm scared of hurting the wound. Which, though admittedly a fair distance from the chute, is still close enough.

Wiping forward isn't easy either. A two handed operation - one to lift and clear, the other to wipe.

But it feels good to have pooed. Because now I can take the hydrocordone.

This is the end of the poo post.

That's better

After a night spent leaping out of bed periodically due to stabbing pain in my upper thighs because of the tight bandages, I was pretty desperate to be able to loosen myself up.

(Technical note: The way Dr. Brand does this, there are two layers of bandages: one directly over the wound and doing the real work of covering the wound and keeping the cheeks together. They also secure this tube to the wound so the wound can drain. The funniest thing about this tube is that it terminates in a bulb (which they call a "grenade" for some reason). For some reason, this bulb has attached to it a rubber loop. So it appears to be a belt loop. Which is say that someone imagined wearing this tube outside your clothes and attached to your belt. I have way more pride than that! For now, I'm sticking to the house and just being naked with the bulb tucked into the ace bandage. Glad it's summer. So anyway, these first bandages will stay on for five days. That means no showers, which no one in my household is looking forward to. I just discovered conditioner this spring and I don't like the thought of what this will do to what remains of my hair. It'll be spot cleaning only till Monday. And but so there's a second layer, which is the ace bandage, and this is really just to keep things aligned and in check. More below.)

Luckily, Dr. Brand's assistant Lonnie gets to work at 6 on Thursdays, and even luckier she's a total dream. She called me right away to let me know that the bandages needn't be tighter than bike shorts. What she doesn't know is that the first pair of bike shorts I ever got were a small and still were saggy aroun the butt. That's not really my problem anymore, but the buddha butt (my wife's name for it, not mine - wait, maybe I was the one to call it that) is a finely proportioned thing. Or it was - we'll have to wait to see what it looks like after the ass surgery, since it's still got bandages on it and that ace wrap around those. And so my wife and I immediately re-wrapped and now I feel a lot better. Of course, this means that the actual pain from the wound is now a lot more noticeable, but I'll take what I can get.

And what I get includes a massive shipment of food from my mom that arrived today. One box is larger than the size of my refrigerator when I lived in Paris.

Here's my number one recommendation for anyone getting ass surgery: surround yourself with loving, attentive family and friends. I guess you kind of have to do that as a life's work far before the surgery, but oh lord does it help. My family is far away, but the contact by phone and the care packages are great. And my wife of course is being a total champ.

My number one recommendation for anyone that knows someone getting ass surgery: be as loving and attentive as possible. Your friend will need it and always thank you for it. As I've written previously, there can be a lot of shame surrounding ass surgery, which means that your being able to deal with it in good spirits and with no judgment is a huge thing for your friend. My sense is that sometimes after ass surgery, people want to just disappear until they're healed. I'm thinking, though, that since you don't actually disappear, since you're always there if only for yourself, it helps to have dear ones involved.

I'm going to go involve myself with some of those goodies my mom sent.

Standing up

Because sitting on my ass hours after ass surgery either feels a) painful, b) like I'm tearing open the wound, or c) really painful. But I could have done this lying down on my stomach. Only, my bandages are wrapped so tightly that lying down feels pretty bad, too. So thank goodness for having the resources to have a laptop that I can place on our mantle and so type standing up. My wife took a picture of me doing this, but I'm guessing she's the only one who will find me standing up typing naked but for my ace bandage wrapped so tightly around my hips it feels like they're bruising, only she would find that charming. The bandage actually kind of looks like the bottom of an old-time swimsuit. For a woman.

I'm not sure how I will get to sleep tonight, since lying down is so uncomfortable. Also since I spent most of the morning unconscious, I'm not really sleepy. And the pain medication, which doesn't begin with an n, but with an h (hydrocordone) is supposed to make you constipated and as much as I dread the deuce with my bandages, I'd rather not be blocked up. (Do know, the bandages [and the wound] end above the chute, so there's no real risk of, well, soiling. If I wipe right.) (What? I'm writing about ass surgery. Poop will be mentioned. Not often, but I bet I write about my first bm.)

So I will dive into one of the many trashy magazines my wife bought me. My sister let me borrow some of her favorite trashy movies, but movies tend to keep me up and reading about what People magazine has to say about Owen Wilson's "secret pain" will likely knock me out. (I feel badly for anyone who does what he did, don't get me wrong: I'm just not counting on People to help me take him seriously.)

So day one of post ass surgery is, oh man I hope, drawing to a close and you know what: for all the discomfort and . . . discomfort ass surgery is a good thing.

Right after ass surgery

A little woozy. I'm on a pain medication that begins with an n but I'm not sure what it's called. My wife is out now getting the prescription filled. So this post will be a little scattered.

First off, it feels very good to have actually had the ass surgery. I was sick earlier this week and afraid it'd have to be postponed, but on top of that, it's just good to have had the surgery actually done. I was under general anesthesia, so I was out like a light during the whole thing, which I'm very glad of. The strange thing was that they started wheeling me towards the O.R. and as they were, they administered the anesthesia, so as I was traveling I was going under. I do remember saying hello to Dr. Brand when I got to the O.R..

What I'd really love right now is a standing recliner. Standing feels much, much better than any kind of sitting or lying down. I'm wrapped in a very tight ace bandage - one of the means of pushing the cheeks together so I can heal properly - and all pressure is uncomfortable. So a standing recliner is basically a plank at a an angle with armrests, so you can lean back standing. Lena Lamont uses one during her cigarette break on the Civil War picture when she meets Don Lockwood for the first time - initially ignoring him and then becoming nice once RJ Simpson announces they'll be starring in a new movie together. If you haven't seen Singing in the Rain, go see it! It's a phenomenal film with top to bottom great performances, most particularly from the smaller roles. And if you see it, you'll know what I was just writing about . . .

So yeah, I'm wrapped really tight in an ace bandage around my hips. I like this a lot because it's helping me heal. I like it quite a bit because its kind of sexy to be bound. I don't like it at all because it emphasizes my love handles and makes it seem like I have some back fat. Of course the idea of being sexy or worrying about the appearance of love handles is kind of hilarious, given that I have a tube coming out of my crack and a bulb at the end of the tube to collect the whatever will be coming out of the wound. You'd think that with that setup and woozy and uncomfortable it'd be hard to maintain my vanity. You'd be wrong.

The hospital staff were pretty great. Answered questions, laughed at my attempts at humor (but really, who can resist the one about the zero and the eight) and were very professional and accommodating. At one point in pre-op there were some people walking up to my chart and writing on it without ever introducing themselves, and that didn't feel good, but that only happened when other doctors were with me.

Favorite part of the morning: having Dr. Brand's assistant Brad draw on my butt cheeks. He was outlining the extent of the area where they'd be working and lucky me he had to do it twice, so I had my ass drawn on and then swabbed and then drawn on again. Before he started he asked me to stand and the asked if I was standing normally. I told him I was standing normally for someone in socks and a hospital gown about to have this butt drawn on by someone he'd just met 5 minutes previously. I don't know why, but the feeling of a felt tip pen on my butt cheeks was very pleasing.

Least favorite part of the morning: realizing that no matter what pain medication I was on, I'll still be pretty uncomfortable for the next five days. The wound isn't bad and the pain isn't too bad, but it is quite uncomfortable, and as I wrote above, there's no way to sit or lie that I've discovered that isn't uncomfortable. Maybe something will occur to me.

What's occurring to me now is to go to the Apple site and check out their new iPods and cheaper iPhone. Window shopping is always fun.

More later.

Ass Surgery

This is my first blog.

I'm doing it because my friend Leslie thought there was perhaps something funny about my having surgery done on my butt. Or, as she put it, "ass surgery." The whole thing had struck me as very scary and traumatic, but if it's funny, too, so much the better. So this will be a record of my recovery process.

Now, you should realize that reading about ass surgery means reading a lot about my ass, and that ass surgery is a serious surgery. Since part of the purpose of this blog is to inform, there's going to be a lot of . . . information about ass surgery in general, my ass surgery in particular, and my ass in most particular. If you find reading about my ass to be distasteful, you should probably stop reading now since that's probably most if not all of what's on order. If you find it to be embarrassing, well, I don't blame you, but part of the idea with this blog is for ass surgery to not be embarrassing. Plenty of people need ass surgery and all of those people know some other people so there's so many more people who know someone that needs ass surgery. Hopefully if you fall into any one of these categories, this will be a helpful read, because everyone who's going to have ass surgery or knows someone who's going to have ass surgery can afford to read more about it.

My surgery is tomorrow, so there are some things I want to cover first.

Most importantly: if you are here to find out more about pilonidal cysts, please go to pilonidal.org. They are a phenomenal resource for information on this condition. This blog will just be about me and my ass surgery. They're all different. The asses and the surgeries, I mean.

Next importantly: if you don't know what a pilonidal cyst is and don't want to take the time to check out the amazing site pilonidal.org, here's the run-down: "pilo" for hair, "nidal" for nest. This condition occurs when hair follicles in the natal cleft, what the French call the crack, stretch out and become infected. Once this happens, an abscess can develop, formed by both puss and ingrown hairs. If the abscess is untreated, it can grow in size and become mind-bogglingly painful. The first time I had one, it was very small as these things go (like the size of a large pea) and was so painful I couldn't sleep at night.

Once you've developed one, they tend not to go away. Mine was comparatively minor, but each time I sit on a hard seat for more than 45 minutes, it becomes inflamed and needs to be treated. Since I've had several recurrences, again, all minor, I'm going to have surgery to take care of this.

I will have what is known as the "cleft lift" procedure, pioneered by Dr. John Bascom and performed on me by Dr. Marc Brand in Chicago. Here's more on that procedure: http://www.pilonidal.org/pdfs/bascom.pdf. Basically, the doctor cuts a slice out of your natal cleft and draws your butt cheeks together to create a shallower cleft, and one without the effected hair follicle(s). Recovery is supposed to take 6 weeks, with 2 two first being kind of hectic. Like, tubes out of the wound and complicated bandages needing daily changes. Dr. Brand has received nothing but the highest praise from former and current patients on the pilonidal.org message boards, and I'm as confident as I can be under the circumstances.

Third importantly: Since I have a lot of shame around this, I thought it would be important to publish my name. I think what got me about Leslie's comments concerning my ass surgery was that it was okay to laugh at it, but that means letting people know you have had ass surgery. So I figured by announcing my name I could say it was okay somehow. Which of course it is. The catch is that given insurance in this country (USA) and current and potential employers and all that kind of nonsense, I think such a disclosure would be unwise. I don't want to be pegged as a risk for anyone with control over whether I'm bankrupted getting medical treatment (see my upcoming blog "You Don't Have to be a Socialist to be For Socialized Medicine" about the health care system in this country). I'm assuming it's relatively easy to determine my "real" identity and if that's of interest to anyone, go for it. Just know that I've asked my name to remain private and if you broadcast it you're doing so to scratch your own personal itch. Besides, most you you were sent the link to this blog by me, so you know exactly who I am.

For the rest of you, well, let's just say that I'm that guy, the tall one with glasses and thinning hair who performs, directs, and devises theatre in Chicago and is also a PhD student there. I'm married to an extraordinary woman who will help me recover.

So there.

Ass surgery is in 11.5 hours. Wish me luck.