the hospital days, February 3 through February 9

It is a Tuesday morning and I'm lying in a bed on the sixth floor of the neurology wing. I feel great and as usual I have a ton of energy and plenty to do. Even though I'm a temporary prisoner here, I need to take care of my dental practice and my family. Thank goodness for private room because it turned into an office and a party room.
First things first, I had to keep the dental practice running. On the Tuesday through Thursday, I probably put in over 30 hours of work to try and get everything organized before going under the knife on Friday. I have a large network of people in the dental industry including consultants, financial planners, insurance agents and placement agencies, who were all extremely helpful in helping me get through this. However, the greatest praise and thanks go to my entire staff who went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that everything would run smoothly while I was gone. Having great people work for you, with great skills and having the patients still receive the highest quality of care, all while having fun, is exactly the way I practice.
special note: this is a time warp entry. As of mid-February, we now have two excellent doctors who are working the practice. Their clinical skills in cosmetics and general dentistry, plus their dedication to our patients, and yes, they both have a great sense of humor, have created a better practice. I have talked to and met with them personally, and I could not be more pleased. Special note: end of time warp.
Extra special thanks to my wife Sue. She was the office liaison, secretary at the hospital, mail delivery gal, office morale gal and one of the greatest huggers you'd ever want to squeeze, among many other things.

Okay, it's time to get back to hospital stories. The entire hospital staff were great and we had a lot of laughs. They liked when they were assigned to my room because they say they never get people like me in here. It was never boring here.
On the day before the surgery, they had someone shave the area I was to have surgery on. I preferred the whole head but since they had some markers on my head for the surgery, I had to wait.
This is the space for everyone to fill in the standard brain jokes.
For example: they did a CT scan and found nothing up there. When they opened my skull, a farting noise came out, so we can assume this guy has shit for brains. I think you get the idea. Have fun with it.
I had surgery late afternoon on Friday. It would have been earlier but the doctors were at a cocktail reception. (joke)
They removed about a 3 cm tumor just under the skull and had to leave the smaller ones alone due to location. I came out of the anesthesia rather quickly and was cracking jokes almost immediately. They only had me in ICU to the next morning and once again kicked me out to the same room I was in before. I really didn't have any pain except for the fact that felt like I was sleeping on the edge of a board against the back of my head.
Obviously, I wasn't quite as spry as I was before the surgery, but that didn't stop me. I needed a barber to finish the head look and found a nurse's assistant named Justin who look fully qualified to handle this since he was bald. He did a fine job. Next on the agenda, I had to find a cute nurse to shave a large letter 'P' on my chest.
One of the side effects of the surgery and also from my wall walking into days, was that I had peripheral vision problems on my left side. They had the hospital room booby-trapped because the main hospital door to the room when open was halfway into the bathroom doorway and to no surprise I must've run into that door 50 times based on the amount of times that I have to pee. Which reminds me of a nighttime story there. They hooked me up to an IV when I was sleeping that first night and when I woke for my nightly visit I found I was trapped. I reached for what I thought was a catheter container and almost urinated in a breathing apparatus. When the nurse got into the room, it looked like I was slow dancing with the IV stand. She was able to unhook me and save the day and I did it without running into that damn door.
On Saturday, the physical and occupational therapist checked me out. They made me use a walker and placed a belt around me. That didn't last for a long and I was cruising the hallways in no time. I still have that vision problem and tended to walk into things on the left side. They gave me exercises for my left hand and passed all their tests including stairs. They had put a sensor in my bed so they knew if I got out of bed, but they gave up on that because I was always going somewhere. I had a lot of family and friends come and visit plus a lot of phone calls and I thank everyone for visiting. Like I said before, it was the party room. We played games, had a dart gun, and had a lot of laughs and stories.

On Monday morning, they gave me my walking papers for escaping the hospital. I just had to wait to meet all the doctors that I would be involved with from here on out which ended up taking until early evening. The neurosurgeon, based on the biopsy, stamped reject on my head and basically gave me the quality of life speech. He said that this is the same type of brain tumor that Ted Kennedy has but in your case you're younger, you're in a lot better physical and mental condition then he is, and you're much better looking. Initially I thought these were words of encouragement, but then I realized that he just described 99% of the population of the United States. The Pogo is a survivor and I am 100% sure that I will beat this.

I finally escaped that evening and they let me walk out of the hospital. When we got to the main entrance, my wife pulled the old disappearing person trick. When I followed her outside for the valet parking, she was there one second and then completely disappeared. In other words, she was standing on my left side. It was just like magic.

POGO