I feel vastly better today. Suspect I was more in critical spoon shortage yesterday than anything else, but there might have been an ailment I finished fighting off.

I ended up sending my regrets along with my spouse to thanksgiving dinner. I may just be out of spoons, not coming down with something, but I'd as soon not risk passing on anything if it is the latter.

Oh and also thanks to my grad school colleagues who covered my Latin classes for me while I kept insisting that I'd be fine to get back to work in just a few more days and then discovering I would not, in fact, be ready for a brisk walking commute & explaining verb forms in front of a whiteboard.

Yes! And really if you're gonna have an organ yeeted (yote? yoten?), having it be one that has a duplicate still in the body anyway is pretty much the best option.

Anyway. I'm surly as heck today, I have a pounding headache, I don't wanna do anything...

...but it's thanksgiving. And I'm still grateful to/for all those people.

(Some of them are even on Bluesky. Thanks again for the "seriously, go to the ER" prod I needed, friends! You were so right!)

And the surgeon who stopped by to explain I'd need to wait a few more hours or surgery because a child with a stick imposed in his eye had just arrived. The next day she gave a fascinating, detailed, rather gory account of why she'd had to remove my organ, and of her best efforts to save it.

And the anaesthetic guy who sat down with me before the surgery and carefully explained how everything would work, the risks, his qualifications, and how he would take care of me.

And the nurse who tolerated my many requests for something to drink while not letting me have anything, for safety.

And the paramedics who put a warmer blanket over me and reassured me repeatedly (to my many groggy but frantic questions) that the mandatory ambulance ride from one hospital building to another would be covered by mult insurance, so don't try to just walk a mile like this, honest.

And the ultrasound tech who was extremely kind and careful as she performed the most painful medical procedure of my entire life. (I think the morphine was starting to wear off at that point.)

And the apartment facilities guy, who came in on a Saturday morning to fix the electronic lock on my apartment's bedroom door, as its battery had failed and locked me out of my own room as I huddled in the living room for an hour with an increasingly hysterical dog sitting on my stitches.

And I'm grateful for the friends who watched the anxious little dog overnight, and picked me up from the hospital the next day and gave me a day & night on their couch, then a bag of appropriate foods when delivering me home.

Bonus thanks to the dog pickup friends, who had to come pick up my keys, then call me twenty minutes later because that delightful morphine had me so high that I'd given them a mangled address that was a cross between the Texas house and my grad student apartment. They got the dog safely delivered!

I still have very warm fuzzy feelings about the thanksgiving morning when online friends convinced me that my extreme pain was not "worse cramps than usual" and I should go to the ER, which ended with me getting an organ removed at 10pm that same day.

...not really funny, but I think fondly of it?

...oh god the startled laugh of empathy that just burst out of me.