Juan Céspedes - March 2010 

I told my doctor yesterday (20 days after surgery) that I was beginning to feel rather well, so we decided to go back to work.

I feel about 80% recovered now, and I can do almost everything: I can drive again, I can jump, I can even run (but only a few steps)... and I can sit for a few hours and work rather comfortably.

So, I am back into the real world again...

I have been working for the last few days in improving my web pages (www.cespedes.org and juancespedes.es), specifically the blog and pictures parts (in fact, I have removed all the other parts).

Regarding the blog, well, it is now a real blog :-). I can add entries (like this one) and edit previous ones from a web browser. All the entries are stored in a PostgreSQL database. Every entry has its own, permanent link. People can add comments, and all of them are visible from the permalink in each page.

Regarding the pictures, I have simplified the URLs used to navigate throw them, in order to speed up navigation and to help the web crawlers. The list of all the pictures (more than 64,000) are also stored in the database, and I have added captions to the pictures with localization (in order to show different things in Spanish and in English), and I have created labels to tag each picture.

To-Do list: improve/automate the way I upload pictures, store and show scanned images, crop/rotate pictures, create albums, save list of people in each picture, show Exif information, save the place where each picture was taken...

This evening, Trini has come home with something new; her father, José Juárez, has given me an unexpected gift: a budgerigar.

It is green and yellow (like almost every budgerigar). He's male and lives in a small jail, with two transversal sticks, a hoop, a feeder and a trough.

Right now, he lives in the kitchen, on the table, and next to the window. He is rather shy and tweets very loud, but only a few times in a day (at least for now).

Before the surgery, I was given a long-acting local anesthetic, which lasted about 8 hours. The main problem in the hospital after surgery was the inability to urinate; at 3am they used an urinary catheter, and that was really uncomfortable. I could not sleep at all until they removed it at 7am. But even then, I still could not urinate until 2pm, and only a few drops, and with a great pain.

On Friday, February 26th, at 3pm, I left the hospital and went home; the doctor gave me a prescription medicine for pain (paracetamol and metamizole), and recommended me frequent soaks in warm water (sitz baths) to help relieve pain.

The first week after the surgery was the most painful time of my life, especially during the first bowel movement.

Since them, I have started to feel better though. I feel about 75% recovered. I still feel a little pain and I cannot sit for long periods of time, but in a few days I will begin working again and my life will return to normality.