Home Again To Happy Dogs; Most Embarrassing Moments; War Movies

Currently Reading: The Big Red One by Samuel Fuller

Ok, everybody can relax, I'm here :-)

That's right, I'm home now, finally :-) The dogs are VERY happy to say the least. I don't think I've stopped smiling since I got here.

Don't get me wrong, it was very nice of my folks to put me up the past few days. I needed that. Needed the quiet time to catch up on my rest and get used to doing things again. But you know, doesn't matter where a place is, it never can quite compare to home. No matter where you go, no matter how fancy the hotel or how great the city, if it's not home, it's just not the same. I'm home now and I'm already feeling a whole lot better :-)

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Since I was in the hospital, and not on vacation, I don't have any really great stories to tell. Nothing dramatic happened. No torture or anything like that. Hell I was on a clear liquid diet so I didn't even have to worry about bad hospital food. The strongest stuff I was given was beef broth.

That being said, there were a few less than stellar moments during the trip. You have to laugh about these things or at least not let them get to you. If you let stuff like this bother you, you'll end up depressed and believe me, the hospital is NO place to be depressed. It's bad enough all on it's own. I purposely didn't take my hearing aids with me beacuse I didn't WANT to hear what was going on outside my room.

Moment number one came as I was being whisked off to surgery Thursday afternoon. I'd been in bed at that point for over 24 hours, not counting bathroom breaks. I hadn't eaten anything since Tuesday dinner. I hadn't had any of my usual, daily medication either. Why does this matter? Well it all leads up to one big moment: Return of the Exorcist!

I'm being pushed down the hall, people all around me, when I hold up my hand and say to everyone that I'm feeling sick. Feeling a bit dizzy. They stopped. People looked around. No one seemed to know what to do. I told them to get me something to throw up in because I was probably going to throw up. No response that I could see or hear. Second time I was a little more curt. Didn't matter becase right after that I became a fountain.

Now, you would think that as long as it had been since I'd eaten, and considering the amount I'd thrown up the day before, I'd be empty at that point. Turns out I wasn't. I must say, I was rather impressed with both the distance I managed to spray as well as the volume :-)

The next one came later that night, well after surgery. Everything had worn off and I'm stuck with facing this nasty reality that I have to pee, the bathroom's way over there, and I'm WAY too sore to get up.

Solution? Pee jug. They'd given me a pee jug earlier in the day to track how much I was peeing vs how much fluids they were giving me. No problem. Just used the pee jug right there from the bed. Worked great. Just like a bed pan. At least for a LITTLE while.

Late at night, jug is getting kinda full. CC's asleep and I don't want to wake her so I angle the bed a little, trying to move the jug around and then I feel it. WHOOSH! Yup, spilled the damn pee jug all over myself.

Hope you weren't drinking anything when you read that cause you probably spit it all over the monitor :-)

Anyway, that night my attendant earned her little bonus high five thingy. The volunteers give you these bonus smile things so whenever someone does something REALLY nice, you give them one and they hang it up somewhere. It's nice little attaboy type thing. Well she earned it that night let me tell ya. CC managed to get me mostly cleaned up then the two of them changed the sheets somehow. Still not sure how that was possible given my condition.

Best part, no one made a big deal out of it. Talk about humiliating. Pee all over myself. Well, at least I didn't have to clean it up ;-)

The last moment I like to call "marking my territory." I spent so long in bed with these weird abdominal sensations that every time I get up gravity makes me have to pee. Everything shifts and WHOOSH I gotta GO!

Well, I can't make it to the bathroom obviously. I'm not moving very fast these days. CC suggested, before I left the hospital, that we use those adult diaper things that people with bladder trouble use. In the very least, it'll prevent a REALLY embarrassing moment right? Yes, I suppose so, but it still feels WEIRD.

Got to my folks' house. I was climbing out of the car when it hit me and I mean it HIT me. BAM I had to GO. So I went :-)

I'm thinking it was a symbolic thing. I was just marking where I was going to stay for a few days, that's all :-)

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Been reading online that Jarhead isn't the greatest of war movies. Most folks are complaining about it's very anti-war message. That's sort of the rage in Hollywood of course and has been for a LONG time. Prior to that you had a whole lot of war movies that while were more positive, were totally unrealistic. They were more like adventure movies set DURING a war.

If you want a middle ground, a good war movie that doesn't get all freaky with the anti-war message, get a copy of The Big Red One. It's been out on DVD for a while now and it follows the exploits of a 1st Infantry squad during WWII. Hey, it's got Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill in it so how can you go wrong eh?

One of my favorite spots in the movie is the Normandy landing. Sam Fuller shows the world that you can depict the landing of Normandy and not traumatize the audience the way Speilburg did. Yes, you get a full sense of the danger and tension but you get it without seeing people turned into jello by high powered weaponry.

So, when you're in the mood for a good war movie, check out The Big Red One. You'll love it.

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