Ka Ching,

No, I am not writing about some Chinese philosophy.

 I am writing about the hibernation I have been in since I was about 6 years old and first played with the idea of living a life of poverty and prayer to lord god in heaven. Declothed of that wonderful illusion around the age of 26 having spent a year and a half in organised religious life, and many years previously in disorganised religious life, I set out on a path of trying to make my life work.

In short the good brothers were uncomfortable with my taking it all so seriously and to the letter of the law, and of really putting it up to them, and they sort of moved me sideways and out the door, quite quickly in fact.

So began a life of study and creativity. For the first time in my adult life, I actually found myself with a group of people in University with whom I had little or no empathy. Consider if you will a 27 year old with a penchant for detachement trying to have a conversation with an 18 year old child of an upper class family, who's only interest in life is where the next 42 screaming orgasms and whisky chasers are comming from. The source of finance for the cocktail drinking life was usually mother or father, in the detached house on 12 acres up the north west somewhere. The cash was obtained by lying about some obscure course in languages that was absloutly necessary for this grade A student and model of Irish Citizenry.

Then once I was qualified so to speak, and with a very complicated love life, I banged around film and T.V studios and sets. Nothing permanent but all good clean and healthy fun. Never earning a huge amount of money either but slowly building a reputation as a reliable team working, non complaining, likeable bloke. In the film business this means you get hired. In Ireland the film buisness how ever isn't as prolific as other countries, and I was still broke.

I said it didn't I. Anyway, when boy came along it was time to get serious and get a steady income. I moved into IT after a dodgy bar job here or there. As luck would have it, I got a lovely number programming for airlines. I got trained up, did ok, got married and then that Sep 11th attack happened.

The day we all lost our jobs someone rang me up to see would I be an emergency teacher of english to a bunch of kids in rough part of town. Hell Yeah. I lasted 2 years teaching part time, there was a down turn in the economy. I had a young child marriage problems, confidence problems, goal issues, and my wife wanted to go home. I had also finally found my way into a political party that I had been trying to get into for about 2 years, I had produced and directed my own play without a loss financially, I had almost completed a course in psychology, but as usual these things are for the middle classes, and I wasn't, so finance and pressure from my partner I gave it all up. So we came to France.

I started after a year to teach english, just as my marriage fell apart. Then I got into I.T and being the sort of guy I am I had no idea of salary.

Now 4 or 5 years later I do. It's like just before my operation something went Ka Ching, or is ker chaing, anyway the penny, about 6 million of them in fact dropped.

If our dreams are ever going to come through, it's time, beyond time in fact, but better late than never, to get up off of my rear end and make it happen.

Who knows by the end of the year instead of stressing out at  the end of each month because I am overdrawn and then the bank charging me more money, and so a sticky downward spiral begins and gets deeper, I might just be able to come home from a meeting someday and look at lover at say .......Ka CHING.

I might sound sad, but I am just nervous as hell and pretty excited about the future.......ker ching!

(Image courtesy of : http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01431/euros-cash_1431091c.jpg )

Health

My arms feel like rubber. I feel like I am one of those nodding dogs. You know when I was 7 years old my parents went to the U.S.A. They brought me back an alabaster football player with a spring for a neck. It was fun. I think he had a red jersey, touch his head it would bobble up and down. Touch mine it will just fall forward.
I got the xrays back too. So here is another question. Anyone interested in seeing what they did to me on the inside?
Booboo is ill. She has rhynolaryingitus.....I haven't a clue how to spell it and I am too feeble to bother looking. She is a trooper but gosh it's a heart breaker to see her so ill.

Recovery

I am feeling a lot better. I have much less pain. The pain is more localised. Last night I slept a bit better but it was still 3am before I dozed off.
I will probably go back to work near the end of the month. Lover lost her job the day I was operated and it's an anxious time for us. I try to stay focused on the positive, on moving forward. I try to make it happen for me in a way. Not easy when I am not so lucid and I don't have much focus. I go to rehabilitation every day. My fitness before this issue, and the fact I am doing what I was told to do, seem to be helping me heal quicker than expected.
So it's all good news.
We go to Ireland for Halloween, just 5 days. I am so looking forward to being on my feet, seeing family and friends, feeling my ancestors, smelling the rain, feeling the wind....and 5 days of that will be enough to take the edge of the longing :-). I would murder a pint of Guinness.
So anyone thinking of me out there, I am fine. Getting to where I am supposed to be. Now if I can only find a way to have a lot more money life would be darn near perfect ......

Giving you what you asked for :-)

This is for you spooky people out there who said post the photo. I feel a bit odd about doing it but what the heck might help someone if they have to go through the same thing. So here is some factual information. All that red stuff is a sterilising fluid not blood. There is no blood but lots of bruising, all that stuff that looks yellow well it is, and blue and black and whatever.

I am better than I was when that photo was taken. I spend most of my 24 hours a day between sleep and awake...neither one or the other. Lover is looking after me so patiently and putting up with my extremely bizarre mood swings due to the funny meds they had me taking. I am in a lot of pain but it has dulled a lot. I don't really have any strength to speak of. I am loosing my almost 6 pack belly by the day. I don't have the strength to lift my arms above my head.  I have something weird going on in my throat probably the stitches...I hope so, otherwise I might have another problem. I am not tasting blood anymore which is good.
The cut is a good one, the scar won't be hugely noticeable I think. My left arm and hand are numb/pins and needles still, but immproving. This just has to be the last health issue I have. There is a life to be getting busy with.
Perhaps it's telling me slow down, but honestly if I was any slower I would be going backwards...Actually I am going backwards on the sports front. But hey. I am undergoing physio and all will be well.
Thank you all for your words of encouragement. Already I am getting flaky again and very sore so I have to stop writing and post.

Ouch

I am okay. I am in some pain. I am back home. I shouldn't be sitting here at the computer. So I am off back to bed. Thanks for all your well wishes...
Would it too yucky to post up a photo of me post op?
Thinking of you who are thinking of me, and wishing we could have a drink together and a chat....
Now back to recovery.

Ode to an Op

Sometimes when I write here, I avoid the deeply personal. I don't want people to get hurt and too many people who know both of us in my couple read this blog so it's not really fair. However this time I can go deeper because it is just about me. Yes I am going to roll like a hippo in the mud in my own feelings and splay them like a prostitutes' legs over the page for you to read.

My sugical procedure is standard. 

Lots of people get it done. 

I will feel better after it. 

This is the three line mantra that suburban buddists have been repeating at me for the last 48 hours.
This Haku of Health is supposed to make me feel good and positive and have me practically bounding into the hospital as if I was on a can of rubber red bull with a good dose of speed, and completely relaxed and content to undergo the operation that will change my poor sad sorry life............STOP RIGHT THERE BUDDY.

They are going to put me to sleep
They are going to slit my throat open. 
Pull the opening apart reach in a take out a disc that stops two vertebrae rubbing together that is incidently around my spinal cord. 
They are then somehow going to put in a fake one. 
Stitch me up
wake me up 
Send me home.


That probably doesn't pass for a sonnet but lets call it an Ode to an Op.

I happen to enjoy life at the moment and this is becomming a slight inconvienience. The other inconvienience is they took away the spell checker on this thing and I am too impatient to read through it properly. (Besides I am not getting paid for doing this, hence the sloppy work).

The surgeon told me not to stress out. I told him what was stressing me out was the fact I was getting stressed. I have grown up around hospitals, I have watched people pass away. I have laid out dead bodies.
However I don't like other peoples fingers in my body. No not even my lover gets to put fingers where some men really appreciate it.

I just don't like foreign bodies in me. ( I am not being racist here). I have seen E.R. worse still I have seen Dr. Greg House. I preferred Hugh Lawrie when he was a comedy duo with that other brilliant routound actor who played Wilde in the film of the same name. [House has got so formulaic, as to be completely predictable, except for the brain anurism that is caused during a routine chest X Ray because the patient forgot to tell one House's minions he took honey with his coffee and not sugar in his tea. Some deadly nightshade flower had been visited by a bee who made the honey, hence the complication. ]

Anyway my surgeon is nothing like him. I am a little anxious because it's all in French. My flow doesn't flow. I am not quick enough with the questions. I am thinking too much. I mean today I asked what I should bring with me. When I reflected I thought it was probably self evident. 

I didn't sign the paper they gave me before the visit to the anestheseologist. The paper said everything had been explained and I had asked all the questions necessary. So I didn't sign it. Then he didn't actually explain anything either just ask me a lot of questions. So it stayed unsigned. They didn't notice.

I am nervous. I am mostly nervous about the cutting, the bleeding the stitching. So let it be known in case I don't stop bleeding till all 8 pints have run out of me, or I never wake up,  or my honey intake causes some unforseen complication; let it be known that all my worldly possessions go to my two children and until they are 18 to my Lover who for privacy purposes will remain namless here. But if you find me on face book you will find her.
I am a little nervous about the putting me to sleep.
I am slightly anxious about visitors if anyone will come or not.
I am pissed that I won't get to see my son before during or after.
I am a tad nervous I wont wake up. Just somewhere at the back of my mind, there is just a little itch that this could be it.  It isn't it, but it's a possibility, a slighter bigger or slightly more recognisable one than crossing a busy street .........but nonetheless a risk.

No I don't know I will be fine, there is no one reassuring me on a professional basis and I can't tell the future.
So once more as I apt to do here,  like an English King with a hard on for the battle, I throw myself into the breach.. For mine own glory. I will have a scar I suppose that I can tell tall tales about when I recover.
But just on the off chance I don't get the chance to say goodbye and that I love you. Well you know I do. I wouldn't be me if I didn't. I will be less of a man. less of this man when I come out but I will also have a little extra. Perhaps that is something to look forward to. Being a little bit more special than I am already.
Wish me well.

Proof that excercise works...

So this is the difference that 100 days makes, or a summer. At the start of June I started a work out. I started because I needed to build strength so I wouldn't get hurt like I did last year, and end up totally incapacitated for a few weeks, and not be able to do any sports for a few months.... This is the result of my efforts.

 BEFORE

AFTER

Please note there is no trick photography. I am more tanned, I have lost 6kg in rougly 110 days. I cut down on the alcohol, I cut out white bread totally, I cut out startchy foods, like pototoes and pasta in the evening, I drank more water, and ate more fruit.  I still have some way to go. One thing is sure, the discomfort I am in now before surgery I am facing next Friday, would have been a lot more intense if I hadn't built up my core muscles. It's not so easy to move my head, so I can get up and out of bed by pulling on my stomach muscles. Once I am fixed and back running I will post another photo after my next 50 day session. I know I am not Addonis, ( or Addidas hihi) but I like that I am getting fit. It helps the mind too.