When I ate lunch on Sunday, my gallbladder contracted to help digest some of the cheese in my salad. A tiny piece of calcium was already lodged in my biliary duct, however, preventing bile from getting out. My gallbladder persevered. It pushed. It shuddered mightily against the stone. It had me doubled over in agony and Anne rushing me to Evanston Hospital.
All of this on its own would have caused enough pain to last a decade if the gallbladder had simply given up and allowed the stone to wiggle its way back inside like most gallstones do. No, this stone, and six or seven of its smaller siblings, actually managed to get all the way through the biliary duct, lacerating it in the process. By Tuesday morning my gallbladder had turned "gangrenous," according to one of the surgeons who removed it Tuesday afternoon.
I'm finally home, with four painful holes in my belly and a bottle of Vicodin to munch on. I've missed Anne, Parker, my house, and yes, my blog. I'm going to miss the North Shore and Apple Cider centuries, too.
That hurts almost as much as the exploding gallbladder. Moreover, the surgeon pointed out that moderate weight loss combined with increasing carbohydrate consumption and physical activity—i.e., training for a century ride—can all trigger gallstones in the first place. So it's possible that not only did the gallstones render all my training this summer moot, but the training itself may have caused them. Sigh.
At least I can never have gallstones again. And I have a great defense the next time someone accuses me of having a lot of gall.
I'll probably get back to full strength by mid-October, just in time to plop a trainer in the living room. This will enable moderate training throughout the winter, which will keep me in decent shape. Without a major event to train for, and with a reduced ability to digest fatty foods, I expect to complete my weight-loss goal just in time to chow down on holiday foods.
So while my gallbladder's untimely demise seriously hurt my fitness goals for 2006, it should have no effect on my goals for 2007 and beyond, which include more centuries and, ultimately, RAGBRAI.
But still, this week has sucked.
Frank Rich hits it on the head in his column today:
At the National Cathedral prayer service on Sept. 14, 2001, President Bush found just the apt phrase to describe this phenomenon: "Today we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called 'the warm courage of national unity.' This is the unity of every faith and every background. It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress." What’s more, he added, "this unity against terror is now extending across the world."
When F.D.R. used the phrase "the warm courage of national unity," it was at his first inaugural, in 1933, as the country reeled from the Great Depression. It is deeply moving to read that speech today. In its most famous line, Roosevelt asserted his "firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
What followed under Roosevelt's leadership is one of history’s most salutary stories. Americans responded to his twin entreaties — to renounce fear and to sacrifice for the common good — with a force that turned back economic calamity and ultimately an axis of brutal enemies abroad.
On the very next day after that convocation, Mr. Bush was asked at a press conference "how much of a sacrifice" ordinary Americans would "be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines." His answer: "Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever." He, too, wanted to move on...but toward partisan goals stealthily tailored to his political allies rather than the nearly 90 percent of the country that, according to polls, was rallying around him.
This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush's war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher's irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding "all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Fear itself — the fear that "paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance," as F.D.R. had it — was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.
We can show the President and his party what we think of his performance since September 11th when polls open in 57 days and 15 hours.
Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Star Trek's debut. Live long and prosper, indeed.
I just found out about a server crash at a friend's old company. It seems one of the staff members sent a 2.7 MB graphical file (wrapped in a PDF, wrapped in a MIME email) to 900 people. For some reason, that crashed the Exchange server creating 8.5 GB of transaction logs in just under 20 hours, which overflowed the system drive, which caused the entire server to collapse. At last report, a consultant had cleaned out the transaction logs and most of the message queues, but Exchange was still re-trying some of the addresses.
This problem was, therefore, between chair and keyboard. Whose chair and whose keyboard is difficult to tell.
This weeks Economist has a terrific parody of pre-flight announcements:
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.
It's the kid's first day on the job. I think he's doing fine, but he'll probably be more productive once his nap is over:
Through diligent effort, the Chicago Cubs have achieved something truly impressive. By losing to Pittsburgh yesterday, they exchanged places with the Pirates to gain the bottom rung on the ladder.
Loveable? Maybe. Losers? Demonstrably.
Parker and I stopped by my grandmother's place today, and he was a big hit with all the residents. He met about fifty people, let everyone pat him, didn't get crazy (he is only 12 weeks old, so this is huge), and was the sweetest little dog he could be. More than one of the staff suggested he'd make a good therapy dog when he gets older.
But after this morning, he's one pooped pup:
