oh, there's no place like home from the hospital...

and while it shows you how very much you're still you, it also kind of highlights the new aspects you're going to be dealing with as, like, recovering you.

a year and a half ago, I paid a number of visits to someone who was at Lutheran for awhile. I have to say that Swedish seemed way better in every way during my experience there...a lot of smoothness, competence, personability. it may have helped that I wasn't in pain and pretty much didn't need anything, and had just as Dr. Nemechek said, "experienced a miracle".

but one of the nurses watched the "swordfish" scene from Horse Feathers with us. and they all took a minute to look at the Dead poster I had just bought. (go ahead, laugh...you've never seen anything like it)

they were great. it was great. and it was so time to go when it was time to go.

I tend to experience the tension of things after the thing has happened, getting to the finish line before saying, whew.

being home marks the start of the last phase of this, the lay low, be lazy, do exercises, and maybe have a little fun part of it. which, at the moment, seems interminable, but I bet I settle in.

so I had a lot of emotions right off when I came home. like...so...what the hell was all that?

perspective on all of this is that I won the lottery, that there has never been a luckier man on any Emerson Lake and Palmer album than I. but I reserve about 1 1/2 % to say...ouch! man this is weird! we interrupt this life to bring you a special bummer...

and then go right back to, damn, I got lucky.

as per Dr. Nemechek's prescription, I picked up a guitar last night.

it wasn't six and a half hours nonstop at Fanny's. I played three songs. lisa and kathy sang with me. I dropped the pick.

I thought my voice sounded different...maybe not in a bad way...they felt it was the same. maybe my hearing is sorting out.

but it sounded like me playing, on a bad night. it was plenty reassuring.

and if I'm staying open to all possibilities, I have to stay open to the possibility that I may get help from this operation in areas I never let myself dream it could help.

I wonder if my arm not having to move a bean bag in my neck around every time I play a note might help me play more fluidly.

I wonder if the Jim Jones like apnea stuff I have had in my sleep might also yield to some opening up around there. last night, I slept deep for five hours...all things considered, that's really something...and lisa said my snoring was way down. went back to bed and got a little more later...sleeping propped up is none too natural for me, and there'll be weeks of it...but I have to stay open to some sleep easement...

they gave me a small carnival game to help my lungs. you suck on this mouthpiece...the nurse used the term, bong hit, repeatedly...hard enough to keep a little piece of plastic floating, and a larger piece rises on a number scale showing you how much air you took in.

anything that can get my lungs able to hold notes as long as Vickie (and Vicki) need me to, I'm all for.

and I'll keep listening to my voice. ya never know.

I still feel a little like those Terminator pictures, with half a regular head and face somehow attached to half a slower, stiffer, number metallic affair. some muscles on my right side still haven't forgiven me for what they went through.

the Grateful Dead say, I need a miracle every day. that's just how I feel. but they haven't been in short supply. I feel like all of you have been sending a miracle or two of yours when I need them the most.

it means more to me than I could ever tell you.