Last night I got to bed at a reasonable hour, and lulled myself to sleep with a podcast. I slept for a couple of hours and then woke up to use the bathroom. By the time I’d laid back down my arms were on fire all the way up and around my shoulders. I laid there for about 20 minutes waiting for everything to stop screaming and then gave up and took an Oxy, the first of the bottle they prescribed to me. After another 20 minutes things calmed down to the point where I could relax and I fell back asleep. Today I made an appointment with my GP to figure out what’s going on with my arms, because this shit has got to stop.

In the shower, I took advantage of a long hot soak and peeled the majority of glue on my incision off. Yeah, gross. It’s been on there since the 22nd, and when it went on it was clear. By today it was, well, not clear, and had begun to peel off in places. Some of it was harder to remove than the rest, but after I cleaned out my bellybutton (they detoured around that when they opened me up) the rest was pretty easy. The incision itself looks like a picture of the San Andreas Fault from about 5,000 feet: it’s jagged and uneven and there are parts that bulge out and parts that bulge in. Certain sections are numb and others are hypersensitive, not unlike my forearms. Looks like I’m going to have a real pretty souvenir of this experience.

Jen and I did two laps around the Columbia Mall today and that felt good. It was warm, we were moving, and we didn’t have to stop every 2 minutes to look at something (ahem, Finley).