Better day yesterday.

Got past the weekend’s gastrointestinal problems, so I finally was able to get most of a night’s sleep on Monday, and actually got a mostly decent night’s sleep last night, except for waking up at 4 a.m. with some severe lower back pain (a combination of hard beds at the hotel, plus having had to sit in positions there aren’t good for my lower back in order to reduce the pain in the crotch area).

Spent most of the day at the surgeon’s clinic. Apparently Mondays and Thursdays are when he does most of his follow-ups. Long wait until I was called, but it was a chance to hang out with some of the other patients — apparently Dr. Suporn intentionally makes the clinic waiting room a place where patients can hang out if they want some company.

Finally got in to see him and Dr. Bank (Dr. Suporn’s protege, who’s the one who actually did my surgery). Everything’s healing well, and they removed the external stitches (there’s still another 400 internal self-dissolving stitches involved). Since it’s a four-day weekend here, they weren’t able to contact the psychiatrist about allowing me to use the strongest painkiller (the hospital pharmacist refused to give it because a potential conflict with another medication I take), but hopefully they’ll get an answer from him this afternoon.

Worse case, I may need to argue the point with him (politely, because Thailand) when I’d due for another check-up on Thursday. Thursday is also when Drs. Suporn and Bank will take a look inside and see if I’m healed enough to move to the next step of “dynamic” dilation, where one actively pushes against the scar tissue contraction. Yeah, it’s about as fun as it sounds, and also means dilating three times a day rather than twice a day like I’d doing now.

TMI….
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I continue to be amazed at just how exhausting dilating is. Your body is doing it’s best of close what it perceives to be a ginormous puncture wound, so you’re really having to fight it. It can take a good 10-15 minutes of relaxing as best you can (and thinking of England), and slowly, slowly inserting the dilating until you the maximum depth (I’m supposed to reach 7 inches). Then, and only then, does the clock officially start and you’ve got to leave the dilator in there, while holding a strap to keep it at it’s proper depth, for 30 minutes. Time can hang very slowly even while watching TV to distract myself. Between the initial prep work, and subsequent clean-up, the whole process can easily take an hour to 1:15 or more.

Tiring enough doing it twice a day, going to three time a day is really going to be a challenge.