I passed all the benchmarks they set, so Teresa and I arrived home around 4:30 on the 23rd. (We were was ready to leave by 3:00—about 24 hours after surgery ended. Staying to get pain meds could have potentially taken an hour or more in the hospital’s busy pharmacy, which would have put us in the middle of rush hour traffic. Since I had taken a total of 4 extra-strength Tylenol for the post-surgical pain that spiked at about level 3 out of 10, we skipped it, avoided rush hour, then added some time by stopping at a restaurant for a late lunch.)
We had to take care of some packages (and by “we,” I mean “her” for the most part, given my 10-pound lifting restriction for the time being), pick up the dogs to bring home from daycare, then catch up on some TV shows that we hadn’t had the time to watch before tonight.
I also took an hour to attend an online Adult Connect Group with EFMN, use Zoom to show off all the nifty bandages stuck to the left side of my head, teach people a little about the whole RNS system… I made a point of not taking over the group and gave people the chance to talk or ask questions, but dammit, I’m a wealth of information! And I’m happy to share that wealth with other people (whether they’re a captive audience or not…).
Speaking of which, before we left the hospital, someone came into the room to take out the trash, looked at me, pointed and said “Famous Guy.” I might have only spent one or two shifts with any particular nurse or assistant during SEEG testing, but people who clean the rooms stop by way more and this lady remembered my spending a week and a half there (same hospital, same floor) back in June.
I’ve now had multiple people tell me that I need to give my RNS device a name. One person had two separate devices that she called “Zippy” and “Zappy,” but if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do it right. And no, I’m not calling it “Right” to make some kind of meta statement about my usual level of rightness plus the fact that it’s on the left side of my head.
Even though it’s late and I’m tired and ready to sleep in my own bed tonight, I need to make sure I can unload RNS data up into the cloud using a certain tablet that they gave me. Unfortunately, the manual says that it can take two hours to charge fully… which I didn’t read until about 10:30, then spent ten minutes figuring why the stupid thing wouldn’t start. Why, yes, user error is a thing! And that would make it a little too ironic to call my RNS device “Right.”