I've heard people say they've been reborn. It usually got under my skin,... hearing the superficial tones inflected in their voices. And now here I am, Reborn. The words roll off my tongue easy and sweet like cantaloupe.  It's truly as if everything I do is for a new first time.

  By now you may be feeling like you missed something in the story, but don't worry, I haven't said much, and I'll get to it all eventually.

   Well, it's been a while since my last entry. My creative process was somewhat derailed by a few things including an impromptu move from a moldy house. The mold had Stephanie and Me sick with pneumonia amongst other quite a few other pangs. We moved during Easter weekend...with little to No help. I ended up with multiple back herniations, and one doozy of a completely blown out L4-L5 disc. The blow-out was causing some pretty severe nerve damage/pain through my legs. I was shortly-there-after basically bedridden. To make a long story short, I went in for routine back surgery on May sixth 2008...I wouldn't leave the hospital until late afternoon on the twenty-third. Way too early, but way to late ;}

   It would be some time around the fifteenth of May when I would find out I had been in a Coma and had multiple emergency surgeries to repair damage done during the routine discectomy... Two severed pieces of my Anatomy were to be fixed with harvested vein from my inner-upper leg. It would be my primary vein and primary artery aligned with my spine that needed a miracle and a good surgeon to go along with it... There were to be many surgeons. The routine back surgery had gone awry. Apparently, the doctors and nurses began to realize I was in somewhat of a bit of trauma when I finally passed out after vomiting for hours from bleeding almost completely out on the inside. Before I passed out I was complaining, because I could literally feel my stomach and chest filling up. From what I understand they resuscitated me for a couple of hours while waiting for the emergency surgeries.

   If you've ever read Stephanies Blog, you may know a little about the whole of it all. The first night of the repair surgeries I would receive 32 units of blood... that's 2 Full Bodies worth. Thank You to everyone whose ever donated blood, because I just may have gotten some of it. The wild thing is that the blood only stays valid for a couple of weeks. The even wilder thing is that it takes the body a tad longer to produce it's own blood. You can do the math. Can you say creative visualization ;}

    Stephanie saved my life many times in the hospital... more stories to share...I'll get to them some other time.

    I have one specific image embedded my head...Burned into my imagination, because I've just been told the story, I was still asleep...It was this:

     While I was my coma my stomach was splayed wide open for days. The wound goes from my chest to my pubic bone below the waistline. The open wound would clearly show up in pictures taken even from the sides of the bed...so They had to wait for those days to get the swelling down just to staple it up. Plus I had a dome in the wound that was discarding all the hemoglobin I bled out into my body. A sort of seran-wrap kept my organs in the cavity of my stomach area. Every so often the wrapping would need changing..... now that I have given you the setting, this is my most beautiful image:

One day My organ-fortifying-seranwrap would need a change. That day Stephanie held my organs in her hands and kept them in place, as a nurse would redress the bandages.

Good Night to You All,

And Thank You All

Who Have Sent Me Thoughts and Blessings,

Matt McCann