How Did The Mathematician Deal With His Constipation?

He worked it out with a pencil.

Thankfully, no mathematicians required.  Things started moving properly on their own around 7pm last night.  That's eight days after starting to eat solid food and eleven days after surgery.  All in due time...

This surgery was much more difficult than I thought.  I knew it was major surgery but I didn't realize just how major.  Erinn has had both of our kids by C-Section and she says I got it way worse than her.  Fair enough, I had a baby by C-Section and then they rearranged my guts.  It actually feels like they put a cinder block in my pelvis area between my two hips.  That's just how strange and heavy everything feels.  Of course, it's not as clean as a concrete cinder block with all the blood, gauze and hoses still hanging out of that area.  Plus, in the middle of my pelvis, I'm still numb from the slicing.  Erinn recalls that taking a couple of weeks to thaw from when she had a C-Section.  Can't wait for those nerves to regrow.

This morning the nurse came by and said my incision looks great and she tore off the dressing for the last time.  No more dressing.  Every two days I've had a dressing change over my main incision and tape on skin always hurts but tape on skin in the pelvic area is particularly sensitive.  The dressing was about 10 inches long by 5 inches wide from my belly button on down.  Glad that's done now.  Just a smaller dressing around the JP Drain and that stupid hose and bottle coming out of my pelvis to collect my waste fluid from inside my body.

I feel stronger every day.  I still can't sit but right now I'm kneeling at the desk to type this.  Not the most relaxing position but there's a lot more carpet at home than at the hospital.  Lazy-boy reclining is still good and getting in and out of the lazy-boy has gotten much easier. 

I may not be able to sit but I can walk.  I walk 4 to 5 kms each day.  I've been walking to the Ottawa River recently so I do that once in the morning and once in the afternoon.  I feel very light-headed when I get home so it's nap time but at least I'm able to do it.

I can't touch my shoes.  Erinn puts my shoes on and ties them for
me and, dressed like a Walmart shopper,  I go walking, rain or shine.
The weather hasn't been good lately but I don't care.  I still feel
groggy from the meds I was on (no painkillers for me in 1 week)
and I know when I'm feeling better, the sun will come out.