I had an operation on a deviated septum on August 19th. Simple outpatient procedure, no big deal.
LOL - never believe doctors!
What they don’t tell you about this surgery:
It’s not quadruple bypass, but it requires general anesthesia, which will knock you out for a good 24 hours.
I have tremendous pain tolerance, apparently (I have endured two wrist breaks and did not scream much while they were being set), so no pain upon awakening or thereafter but —
They put plastic stents in the nostrils, which prevent you from breathing properly. You will spend a week to ten days breathing like a beached guppy. Not painful but incredibly uncomfortable. Try stuffing cotton up your nose for a week and see how it feels.
Mouth breathing is disgusting and bad, and I hate it. But I gotta breathe, so I do, interspersing that with as much nose breathing as I can manage. My nose has opened up somewhat. The first few days were truly nasty—swollen nasal tissues, complete blockage, massive caffeine withdrawal headache (suggestion: ease off on the coffee before surgery).
All this cleared up, to be replaced by a tension backache caused by the state of the world. When you come up for air after anesthesia, your defenses are down and you perceive with stark clarity. What I saw made me want to go back to sleep, forever. But something told me that it wasn’t my time.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton
I once saw uber-putz George Will pedantically cite the above, focusing on the word “tends.” He was, as usual, defending some bombing or abuse of power. So I looked up the actual quotation.
No one was more careful with words than Lord Acton; notice that he used the verb “tends” when describing mere power, but in citing “absolute power” there was no further modification.
He did not write “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.” That would make no sense. The very definition of the word precludes modification. There’s no such thing as “semi-absolute.” Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The US right now has absolute power over the world. We are everywhere, all the time, plotting, planning, controlling, assassinating, droning, spying, regime-changing, nagging, hectoring, badgering.
In other words, we have been absolutely corrupted.
There is nowhere to go but down - and it can't come fast enough for me. But we won't change unless there's a terrible external shock, because no one or thing ever gave up power voluntarily1. Like a junkie, we will either be stunned out of our next fix, or go down with our dope. I wonder what that will be.
Well, maybe George Washington, but who else?
A physician friend of mine once told me: when it's you - it's a minor procedure. When it's me, it's major surgery
Get back to 100 percent normal breathing soon