Update on my medical situation and plans

[ned.freed@mrochek.com]

Several people have sent mail asking me how things have been going, and if
they have been going according to plan.

The short answer is no, they haven't. The plan was that there would be 4-6
weeks between my two surgical procedures and a total outage of around 6-8
weeks. This assumed that the first surgery would go reasonably smoothly and
that there would be no significant complications afterward.

Neither of the two assumptions have come even close to being met. For starters,
if the first surgery goes smoothly it typically takes 3-5 hours. My procedure
clocked in at over 6 hours. The primary source of difficulty in my case was
anatomical -- I turned out to be one of those rare people whose insides are
laid out suboptimally. My surgeon eventually managed to get everything hooked
back up, but it was extremely difficult and involved lots of extra pulling and
cutting through a bunch of muscle tissue that normally doesn't need to be
messed with. She also noted that it would have been impossible to complete the
procedure successfully had I not lost so much weight prior to the surgery.

Difficult surgeries translate directly into difficult recoveries -- not only is
there simply more damage to recover from, the chances of complications also go
up.

And I've had a bunch of them: Gas blockage, nausea, and dehydration requiring
emergency rehospitalization. This last was the most serious --  I had to  spend
another three days in the hospital getting rehydrated and stabilized.

In any case, my surgeon reevaluated my situation last week, and one look was
basically all it took for her to see that the second surgery wasn't going to
happen any time soon. Her revised estimate was that it would be a minimum of 12
weeks before it could be done. Additionally, her revised estimate of the time
needed for full recovery has now changed from the cheery 2-3 month pre-op
number to a full 6 months.

This doesn't mean I can't go back to work, however. I can. There's no sense
sitting around doing nothing while I wait for the second procedure. I've been
able to work in short stretches for a while now, and so far I've tried with
some success to dig myself out of the huge backlog of email that of course
developed while I was out. I've also managed to tend to a few of the fires that
had started burning at work.

In regards to IETF matters, I plan to start dealing with the various documents
I'm responsible for in the next few days. Active participation in telechats
and such will probably take a while longer -- one step at a time and all that.

I see no reason why I won't be able to continue to work until it is time for my
second surgery. It is relatively minor compared to the first one so theory says
recovery should be much quicker, but if nothing else I've learned not to be
overly optimistic...

				Ned