Health Update / Hiatus

Warning: Descriptions of medical issues, anatomy and surgery.

Hey folks. I've alluded a couple times recently to Health Problems I was dealing with. Figured I should tell you what that's about.

In short, I have a hernia, umbilical type. That's the one where your guts won't stay inside your belly, not the one that makes you bleed from your ass; for some reason a lot of people seem to read 'hernia' as 'hemmorrhoid.' No, I don't know how that works either, but it keeps happening so I have to clarify.

Hernias do not generally produce a lot of drama; people get them, they're unpleasant and often painful, but then they get them fixed and that's usually the end of the story. In other cases, people don't get them fixed, and live with them for years or decades with only mild symptoms. Technically they can kill you, but you never hear of this happening; they're usually treated as an inconvenience, not a serious health concern.

In my case however, I believe (for complicated reasons I don't want to go into) that said hernia has been causing a whole mix of weird chronic health issues for at least ten years, and that getting it repaired is going to massively improve my quality of life. Of course, part of why I believe this is that, since said hernia made itself apparent, said chronic health issues have gotten worse. Nothing terrible, I'm just Not Having A Great Time Right Now and dealing with a lot of anxiety over it.

I am also dealing with anxiety over surgery. I elected to get this fixed as soon as possible, and there was room on the schedule, so I am actually getting it repaired this Thursday. Now, as I said, this is usually a very unremarkable process - I've known many people who had it done, it takes like 40 minutes, the complication rate is low, you go home two hours later and usually go back to your life after a couple weeks of discomfort. There's no strong reason to think that won't be my experience, I have no significant risk factors (other than weight - the surgeon told me to lose 10 pounds though, so I lost 15) but on the other hand, I hate the idea of surgery, I hate the idea of anesthesia, and I know that there's Always A Chance that something will go wrong.

I don't want to dwell on that of course, and I don't want to get too melodramatic over it all; it's a damn hernia, getting it fixed is like ordering pizza. There's a good chance that I'll be back at this in two or three weeks - but I figured I should advise everyone that I could also be on hiatus for a month or two depending on how healing goes. Or I could die! That's always a possibility.

In case that happens, I just want to say: This has been a very strange but enjoyable ride and I cannot thank you all enough for giving me the opportunity to see what I'm capable of instead of being stuck in dead-end jobs my whole life.

Since I don't expect that to happen though: I hope when I come back I will find myself able to do this better and harder and faster than before. That is at least the plan, and the very first thing you're going to see when I'm back is a proper video on the Amiga Video Toaster. That's a promise; I'm shooting it tomorrow, I just won't be able to finish editing until I'm recovered.

Also, while I make no promises about this angle, I should let you all know that I haven't been totally idle the last few weeks; I've been doing a lot of experimentation, searching for a good topic to cover, and much of it has been on various Unix workstations (sparc, pa-risc, etc) as you probably could have guessed from the Sun post. I even got myself an X terminal, which I wrote about here. Not the most scintillating read at the moment, but will hopefully develop into a video sometime in the near future. Just thought you'd like to know that.

Last thing I'll say is: Hey, if you want to share a story about how you had a hernia and it was no big deal to get it fixed and it made your life better, feel free! If you want to share one about how you almost died from one, don't tell me that! It will give me a series of panic attacks that will never stop and will lead to my early demise. Thanks for understanding!