This is PART TWO of the Battle Analysis. New parts will be posted as written. Thanks to the huge amounts of morphine that were pumped into me, the next few days are a total blur. I don't remember arriving in my hospital room. I don't remember talking to people. I don't remember asking questions. I am told that I was extremely talkative after the surgery, and I don't remember any of it. I do remember experiencing some intermittent pain, and I do remember pressing my "pain button" a few times. I remember my ex-wife paying a visit. I really appreciated that. We are still on good terms, and the visit meant a lot to me. I remember that the pain drugs really did work. When administered, they create a "disconnect" in your brain. You can still feel the pain, but you feel it as a sensation other than pain. In other words, you no longer interpret the sensation as pain, although you still feel it. Make any sense? The medication had some drawbacks, though. First, I could not get my eyes to focus properly. They seemed to move and operate independently. I felt like one of those chameleon lizards, the ones that can move their left and right eyes independently. I remember that I could not watch TV or read, because I could not focus my eyes on anything -- it was like severe double vision. Also, the medication caused hallucinations. I kept catching fleeting visions of things out of the corner of my eyes. Mostly cats! It was always in my peripheral vision -- the hallucinations never appeared directly in the center of my vision. But many times, I would catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a cat running through the room. Luckily, I was able to understand that these were hallucinations, and I did not really believe that there were cats in my room! I had some auditory hallucinations as well. When I talked, it sounded to me as if my voice was extremely wavery, like it was being run through a guitar effects processor. I remember asking someone if my voice sounded funny. They said no, so I figured it must be yet another side effect of the medication. I don't remember the moment when I looked at my stoma for the first time. I do remember, however, getting up and emptying the bag. None of this really bothered me until the drugs wore off. Soon, I was allowed to start eating again -- my first meal was clear liquids. I handled that well, although it did result in another first -- the first time I had to empty my ileostomy bag. Within a day or so, I was eating the hospital's "soft foods" diet, which is actually not so bad. I was quite hungry after going several days without eating, and was grateful to have anything at all. But all the trauma of the surgery and all the rearranging of my guts had really affected my appetite. My guts felt somehow "different." They just felt rearranged, slightly bloated, and just different. I can't really describe it other than that. This sensation reduced my appetite, and I wasn't really able to eat more than a few bites of food at a time for almost a week. Over the next few days, the various tubes entering my body were removed, one-by-one. The big day arrived, I was supposed to go home. Before I left, my ET nurse came in to make sure I knew how to change my appliance. After I went home, I suffered a minor setback. I reduced my prednisone dosage too rapidly and suffered severe steroid withdrawal -- dehydration, muscle shaking, dizziness, and abnormal blood chemistry. I had to go back to the hospital for a few days, but I soon got better and went back home. Click here to go to Part Three of the Battle Analysis.