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.