Five Weeks Since Hernia Surgery

It almost doesn’t hurt at all. I know its there when I stretch to reach for something without thinking. I’m on schedule with my exercise program. As a matter of fact, I went to the health club yesterday. I did some slow stair climbing for 20 minutes, lifted my 8-pound weights, and walked back and forth in the pool for 10 minutes.

I feel like I have a length of chain link fence wrapped around my abdomen, and my belly button does this weird zigzag thing with fat pulled up around it. The fat hangs in folds on both sides like the swags and jabots Ruth made for my bedroom windows. My tummy wasn’t pretty to look at before the surgery, but now. Ah, well, what can I say? I am 85. Perhaps when I come back next time, I’ll be a giant red wood tree, live two thousand years, and have no sagging parts anywhere.

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* “A Bierstadt's Redwood Trees of California-Verts.3,” Nevada Recreation, Entertainment Catalogs, Ghost Towns, Gold Books, & Western Art, http://65.40.245.240/omni.htm, viewed Monday, December 13, 2004, 6:37 AM EST.