
Well, I left the last post kind of dramatic about me possibly dying after my surgery… and then never updated it. Whoops. As you can tell, I’m still alive and kicking. My surgery was not much fun to have and the recovery has been slow and frustrating. I still can’t accomplish a lot of basic tasks and it’s starting to drive me insane. As I mentioned, the “good deal” getting off of the boat at work is only good on paper — I miss being me and I’d trade it all to just be normal again. I can’t run right now because the motion hurts too much, and I can’t do push-ups either. I bought an exercise bike to maintain some sort of fitness, but I wish I could just go for a jog like a regular person.

That said, getting every weekend off is pretty nice. I won’t complain too much about that part of the deal. It’s much better than three or four section duty, where I spend every third or forth day at work for at least 24 hours. But because of this, my future remains uncertain. It’s possible I may need even more surgery, which would definitely end my career sooner than I expected. But, I’ve been working my ass of with physical therapy so I can get back to being myself.

In the mean time, my family came out for a visit, and that was really, really nice. Amazingly, it’s been about two years since I’ve seen them last. It doesn’t feel that long because deployment and time out to sea blurs time like stepping in some black hole for months on end. I have a hard time even remembering it straight now.
I was happy to show them all of my favorite places to eat, and do all the things possible. Because we’ve already seen most of it, we knew where to go and where not to go, which made everything much better. I really hope they had an unforgettable trip out here.