The day after Thanksgiving, I started puking and (there's no verb form for diarhhea) which lasted a day and a night and may have been either a quick-acting virus or food poisoning. This conclusion is based on the fact that I was not alone in my suffering.

I came home from the holiday and bought me a box of Popeye's chicken, the best store-bought chicken available, the majority of which I ate on a Monday. Tuesday, my gastric distress returned. After a day of not eating anything, it passed. I am fortunate in that my hunger has enough sense to stay out of the way when conflicting urges impose themselves. However, I was starting to wonder why I wasn't kicking the virus.

Friday, I had a similar, but much less severe reaction I won't describe in detail. You get the point by now. Bile-burps were my constant companion.

The following Monday night, after enjoying yet more yummy fried chicken (I've identified about 4 things I can eat on a fairly regular basis without worrying overmuch about my blood sugar. Chicken is one of those things.) and playing computer games all night, I was overcome with generalized pain in the stomachological region. I tried to sleep through it, but sleep would not come. Showing a level of good judgment heretofore unseen in my decision-making history, I got dressed and headed for the emergency room.

Arriving at roughly 1:15 AM, I was quickly ushered into the back, not due to any urgency on their part, but because it was a slow night. They gave me a tear-away gown, took some blood and other operating parameter measurements, and left me to whimper in a room at the end of the hall for an hour. I puked in their sink to pass the time. Luckily, I have a small measure of control as far as that is concerned. They eventually told me that my gall bladder was inflamed, and that they were going to give me sweet drugs and send me home, intending that I come back the next day for an ultrasound of the area.

Funny stuff, Demerol. They really don't like it when you drive while taking it. When I mentioned that I had no one to ferry me about, they changed plans and decided to call in the ultrasound tech that night, delaying my sweet release in the interim. An hour later, she arrived, they took the pictures, they sent them off to (I wanna say) a radiologist, and I finally got a prescription to take to the all-night pharmacy up the street. Exit time: roughly 4:45 AM. The pharmacy guy was quick, and I was unconscious within the hour. And home, by the way.

The results came back, and they scheduled me for a CAT scan for Wednesday. Meanwhile, I had my makeup appointment with my regular doctor on Thursday, and surgery was already scheduled for Friday morning, on the assumption that nothing new and unusual cropped up. How little they know me.

I got run through the giant magnetic human Xerox easy as you please. Somewhere, there is a computerized record of my abdominal cavity on file. It was an interesting process, and the machine has lights telling you when to breathe and not breathe, which amused me for some reason. I kept asking questions, which the tech thought was because I was nervous, until I explained that I was an engineer and just wanted to know how it worked.

I think it was Wednesday night when I wrote my will. Not an actual legal document in any sense, it was a listing of various thoughts and instructions in the face of the highly unlikely possibility of not waking up Friday afternoon. Contents aren't important now; I'll just leave it on my computer's desktop for future reference.

I should point out that I wasn't actually afraid or worried. I didn't think I was going to die. I am a man who sees possibilities, and prepares to meet them. Going into surgery, even a minor one such as my laproscopic colecystectomy (gall bladder-ectomy), has a chance of fatal consequences, so I made sure things were settled just in case. Not because I thought I needed to, but because it might come up.

Thursday, I went to my regular doctor and told him about my impending fileting, at which point he told me how I could have had all my information passed along to him from the outset. Didn't know, didn't care. I just wanted my pills to keep my feet from bursting into flame.

I called around to the friends I have in town and found one willing to cart my poor self around before and after cutting time. Early Friday, they showed up at the door and hauled me off to the hospital. I was re-attired in the patient uniform, got an IV and some relaxants. They wheeled me into the OR, where I crawled over to the other table and the nice man put the plastic mask over my nose.

I was unconscious for three hours. That was the best part. Yes, I paid attention to the time. Attention to superfluous detail is a hobby. I woke up just in time to puke up some blood from all my mucous membranes that had dried out due to a dose of atropine, which had drained to where I could conveniently expel it at my leisure. They put me in a recovery room, where I slept off the rest of the anaesthetic for two hours, then had a light snack of crackers and Diet 7-Up. Once I proved my urinary tract still worked, they let me call my ride.

Which proved uncommonly difficult. The phone in the room didn't work, because it was plugged into the wrong socket. Once that was settled, no one told me that I had to dial 9 first, so I got a few dead-ends before working it out. The timing, of course, meant that my escape was due at the single hour my ride was otherwise occupied. Luckily, his girlfriend was available to sub for him. I was unplugged, allowed to dress, given my post-op instructions, and wheeled out to the car. I actually had the option of walking, which I found odd. I didn't take it.

They gave me prescriptions for an antibiotic and a painkiller called Lortab 7.5. I figured I could coast on the remaining Demerol until it ran out, stretching my total time-under-medication. For future reference, never do this. Lortab kicks Demerol's ass. Until now, I've never taken a drug that claims to cause drowsiness which would actually knock me out. I had my ride just go get the antibiotics, and had to call them way too early the next day to go get the real stuff for me because I coudn't sleep four hours at a stretch all night.

So, I spent the first half of this week in a drug-induced haze, puttering about the apartment, sitting on my couch staring at an inactive TV for hours at a time, moving ahead in GTAIII through most of the Kenji Kasen missions (Die Yardies, Die!), and figuring out what I could stand to eat that day of my dangerously non-varied supplies.

Wednesday, being able to get through a day unmedicated, I went back to work for half-days to clear up some stuff I wanted to get done before the end of the year, showing an unusual level of employee loyalty. I really was that bored.

Tonight, I watched the pilot to Firefly, which should never have been cancelled. Then I wrote this, proofread it a time or two, and posted it. That follows is a mystery.

So, that's where I've been. How are you?