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I can’t say enough good things about the staff and facilities at Providence St. Joseph’s hospital in Burbank but I can quite honestly say I hope I never see them again. At least this particular visit is over – I’m writing this from my comfy chair in front of my big TV, so I’m automatically happier, although must say that I’m more than a little tired and in a not inconsiderable amount of pain.

Nothing terribly interesting happened at the hospital since I last wrote. I got lots of pain killers, lots of anti-nausea medication, and not enough sleep. Who decided it would be a good thing to clean the hallway floors at 2:30 in the morning is beyond me but I wasn’t really sleeping anyway.

I did manage to get a better picture of the photograph that was in my room when I was there last August. I realize I never wrote about this although I know I told a lot of people about it.

The short version is that morphine does some crazy shit to you. The photo below was hanging on the wall directly opposite my bed and it became a focal point for me reasons beyond it was the thing that I saw every time I opened my eyes. It was the source of a bunch of my more innocuous hallucinations. At various times there were people standing on the balcony, the lights were on in the house, one time there was a dog and a guy with a mask, another time there was a couple climbing up the vines. It was always a photograph – it was animated or moving – but almost every time I looked at it there was something different about it. I should’ve been more freaked out by it but some of my other hallucinations were seriously disturbing so I this seemed like a party trick by comparison.

Anyway, so now I’m home and will be staying here for the next week or so – thank goodness for a flexible work environment that allows me to work from here. My follow ups with Dr. Frenchy and Dr. Wile E Coyote Super Genius are being moved because of my extended hospital stay so I probably won’t get the final results of all the biopsies until next week. That’ll be fun to wait for.

I’m basically okay – it hurts a lot and I’m not looking forward to getting the 20-some-odd staples removed – but this recovery is like a walk in the park compared to the last one. I get to shower, I get to eat, I get to take painkillers, I get to watch “The Walking Dead” on my big TV while sitting in my comfy chair. Things could be worse.