I arrived at the hospital in the early morning. Dr. Kirkwood was presented with a bag full of snacks to be distributed to her surgical team. For energy. This surgery was gonna take 12+ hours. Refueling would be essential. The snacks consisted of mini juice boxes and a variety of high quality protein and nut bars, as well as some dried fruit.

We also presented her with a “HEY CANCER, SUCK IT!” T-shirt (pictured in the Tuesday, May 31st journal entry), and gave her a second one which I told her was to be given to the intern who did the best job. It went to her chief resident, Tim.

Finally, I handed her my unicorn band-aid. It was given to me by my three-year-old friend Pearl, for good luck. Dr. Kirkwood looked at it, then put it in the pocket of her scrubs. I woke up with it taped so securely to my left arm that it is not coming off any time soon, at least not without a bunch of hair. I’m thinking it’s payback for the poster (see the “Dan’s Doctor” link).

Once again, Dr. Kirkwood held my hand as I went unconscious, and she was the first person I saw when I woke up. Her beaming smile told me everything I needed to know about how it went.

Things were so good I bypassed the ICU and moved straight to the Healing Hilton. So dubbed because the view from this room is one of the best I’ve experienced in 15 years of sleeping in San Francisco.

Despite this, there are simply not words to describe the shock and anxiety I felt that first night. I had five tubes coming out of my body: one in my nose which snaked down to drain fluid from my stomach, two coming out my side draining fluid from the suture points inside my belly, a feeding tube directly into my intestine that for the next several days would hang unattached, and a catheter. And that does not even count the epidural and tangle of IV’s I was connected to.

Although my mouth was dry as a bag of chalk, I was told I was not going to have water or food for 3-5 days. This  stark fact, hitting me all at once in the midst of the worst thirst I had ever felt (and still woozy from the anaesthetic), made me tremendously anxious. On top of that I couldn’t take anything to let me sleep. I spent the entire night staring at the clock. The only relief came from the swabs, little sponges on sticks like lollipops, that I could periodically moisten and rub on my lips and tongue.

I can say without exaggeration it was the worst fucking night of my life.