I had an operation to remove a section of my small intestine at the beginning of this decade. I'd had a bleeding problem and the doctors couldn't find the source. One test finally suggested that it was a spot in my small intestine and they operated to remove it. A week in the hospital and another three weeks in bed at home to recuperate. The operation did not correct the problem and whatever chances I took on the operating table and the time I took to recuperate were lost. I'm wondering a bit if this current operation will be successful. The doctor said it went well and he has high confidence in the results. Does that give you confidence? Naive as I am, I do, this guy seems like the real McCoy, but you never know. You know.

I am sleeping without the CPAP (air pump and breathing mask), but I am waking up much like I did before the operation, twice in the night, get up and take a leak, go back to bed and go to sleep again. I think the reason is that my jaw is swollen and lying on a pillow aggravates that condition and over time I wake up when it begins to really hurt. Before the operation I could lie down on my back and relax the muscles in my face and jaw and neck much as they are when I drift off to sleep. My throat would close almost immediately. There was no way to sleep on my back, I've always had to sleep on my side, usually my left side. With this operation I can lie on my back and relax and still breathe easily, even with the swelling, so I'm assuming the problem is fixed.

Still, there's the example of the operation for the bleeding problem. Kind of a drag if this thing doesn't work and I have to ask what did I do or what didn't I do in examining this option that might have changed my decision? I mean, did I fuck up or what? This is the big one, the operation with a success rate over 90%. Chance of failure maybe 1 in 10 or 1 in 15 and the doctor says he thinks it worked without question. And I think that's true, but still, I wake up with my jaw throbbing, take a pee, take a bath, stare at the wall and go back to sleep after about an hour. We'll see. We'll see.

So what else? Went shopping again at 6:00 this morning at Lucky and bought all kinds of stuff. The only shopper in the store. I have more food in my refrigerator than I've had at any other point in my life, yet I'm still losing weight. Eating has been a kind of continuous process, a glass of V8 juice, a glass of orange juice, a microwaved stuffed baked potato, another microwaved stuffed baked potato, some noodles with ground beef and mushrooms (lots of mushrooms). Normally, looking at that, I'd say whoa!, that doesn't look like a diet, but in the quantities I've been eating it doesn't seem to matter. Spring has arrived and 20 pounds have left, maybe I'll think about losing more. I haven't gained or lost any weight in years, but occasionally, for short periods, I'll lose some and then stabilize. Not much longer and I'll have the same waist size as I did when I was 30. (No, I didn't weight 500 pounds when I was 30.) The high drama things you think about when you're recovering and you can't go outside and get into trouble.