If any of y’all noticed the absence of my column in the past few weeks, I’ve got to wonder what you thought might’ve happened to me. No, I wasn’t arrested for Drunk & Disorderly at SXSW, and I wasn’t at the state capitol giving my staunch opinion of allowing hyper-hormonal college co-eds to pack heat on campus. No, sir, my column was on short hiatus due to my recent back surgery and my subsequent drug-befriended recovery period. Luckily, I am able to sit at my desk and hack away at this keyboard that inexplicably now has blurry keys. Hmm?
Now, I hope y’all weren’t expecting me to tell some wild hospital stories about seeing a bright light and meeting angels or dead people. Nope, that didn’t happen as far as I know of, and the only near-death experience occurred while driving in Austin traffic on the way to the hospital. There was a lot of stuff that occurred for hours shortly after that nice anesthesiologist and I discussed different anesthetic cocktails in our respective workplaces, and the next thing I remember was being in recovery hooked up to several IV lines and peeing into a bag. My wife was allegedly there, and she informed me that my first words were “I’m still on this side of the dirt.”
Surgery went fine, and I had to spend the next 4 days in the hospital where I was supplied with two of the greatest things of modern medicine: a personal pain-relief injection pump and a bedside urinal. Between these two glorious items, I was able to take wild adventures and never leave my bed.
