There’s this wonderful little scene in Star Trek IV- The Voyage Home. After the entire crew time travels to the 1980’s, Chekov is injured and lands in the hospital. Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, and local whale specialist Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) infiltrate the hospital to rescue him. During the rescue, McCoy, who is not subtle in his opinion of 20th century medicine, encounters an older woman groaning in pain. “What’s the matter with you?” (Great beside manner there, Bones.) When she tells him she’s undergoing kidney dialysis, he gives her a pill he very conveniently has with him, then leaves her to complete the rescue. As they make their escape we see our little old lady flying around in a wheel chair shouting, “Doctor gave me a pill, and I grew a new kidney! Doctor gave me a pill, and I grew a new kidney!” You can actually watch the scene here.

Why do I remind you of this scene? Well, I have a doctor who gave me a new knee. Dr. McCoy with his magical medical pill was nowhere to be found so I had to go the traditional route. Bones! Where are you when I need you? Probably off sipping Romulan Ale with Captain Kirk somewhere. Ah… the life of a fictional character.

It’s been a long several months while I’ve worked through this. Prior to surgery I tried a number of things which did nothing for the pain and only delayed the inevitable. The day of surgery everything went well. The night of surgery? Yeah. Not so much.

Long story short, I fell- landing on the brand new surgical site. This was probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

Duh.

Of course the stitches popped open and I started bleeding. And then I bled some more. Within a matter of minutes, our kitchen floor looked like a murder scene. We called 911 and I had a lovely ambulance ride to the hospital where I proceeded to bleed even more for the ER staff. They admitted me and I bled some more up in my room for my lovely nursing staff. Several vampires caught my scent and lined up thinking it was an all you can eat buffet. 

Thankfully, the implant was fine; the damage from my fall was superficial, if embarrassing. A second surgery and three days later I was home and resting.

As of this writing, I am five weeks post-surgery. While my physical therapist assures me that I’m a rock star, I have been struggling with pain management. Now, in case you were wondering where all this HIPAA protected medical information was headed, let me say that none of this is conducive to writing.

So as of today, here is the state of things.

Flash Fictions – I’ve kept the pictures from the last five weeks with plans to catch up. But for as fun as those are, they will not get me where I want to go. So, I’m leaving those behind and picking up this week again. You can read that here.

I’m editing a superhero story that will be gifted to a private group. I’m contracting with an artist to create a comic-book like cover for it just as soon as I settle on the final title. I will absolutely share that cover with you when I get it! I wish I could share the whole story with you; I may share excerpts of it.  

I wrote a dystopian techno-punk story I wrote for a contest that I had no hope of winning.

You may have noticed a change to the website. Yup, I’ve splurged and now have my own domain. How cool is that? I’ll be updating it as I figure stuff out.

NaNoWriMo: November is coming at us really fast. I should think about that at some point. How about I let you decide what I write this year. Any requests?

Oh yeah, I’ve undergone a slight name change too, which is a long story for another time.

I hope you are navigating these most difficult of times with faith, love, and good literature.