There are so many ways to experience that “deja vu all over again” feeling. Last night through this afternoon was one of those experiences. Kevin had checked into Kaiser Santa Clara for surgery on Monday, where his internals got sliced & diced by a surgeon using a robot… really. You can see a machine like this here. Who could dream up such a monstrosity? It reminds me of a scene in a science fiction movie from the early 50s, “Invaders from Mars,” in which people were strapped to a table (not by choice!) while this machine drilled into them. Well this machine drilled into Kevin in three separate places, removed a section of a tube that runs from the kidney to the bladder, reconnected the ends, and placed a plastic bypass tube that will keep things safe for the next six weeks while the body finishes repairing what the surgeon started.

So part of the deja vu came from visions of this nightmarish machine (and if you follow the link I provided in the paragraph above, you can see it really does look nightmarish!). The second part came from my shift watching over him at the hospital, starting at 8pm yesterday, spending the night in his room in a chair that sorta becomes a flat bed, not sleeping much as every two hours they’re coming into the room to check up on him, and then waiting for the various doctors and nurses to certify that he could leave later that day and set things up to make that happen. We finally leave the hospital a bit after 3pm and drive home, and it very much reminded me of flying to France or Australia, not sleeping much en route, and having to keep going once there. One of those days that never seems to end.

But the good news is that he is home, he is feeling better, and he should be heading back to school and work soon. It’s going to be a while before he’s back on a bike; it’s two weeks before his external stitches get removed, and we’ll find out then how much longer it will be before he can finally ride again.

But really, check out this link for info on the sort of machine that worked on him and tell me that it doesn’t look like some sci-fi torture machine!

Thanks to all for the kind words and encouragement. I promise you it will come back to bite you in the end, as Kevin recovers and gets stronger than ever and becomes that guy riding off into the distance. Hate that!