Lauren Anderson, June 1969 - March 1998

It's hard to believe how time seems to go by so fast, but yet so slow at the same time. It's perspective, I guess. It's also hard to believe that it's been ten years since I heard the two words that have haunted every day of my life ever since. "She's gone."

My sister Lauren was in the process of finishing her final years as a resident at Duke Medical with hopes to specialize in trauma care, when about 10 years 8 hours ago, my parents got a bone-chilling phone call from the Durham Police saying that Lauren had been in a car accident on the way home from work, and that she was being rushed to the Duke trauma unit, which fortunately wasn’t too far away. I was in high school at the time, so I went to the hospital with my parents, my dad and I doing everything we possibly could to keep my mom calm on the seemingly infinite ride from Cary.

We waited for hours, which seemed like years, until the doctor came out saying that she was in critical condition and that she was unconscious. We went in to see her. I've seen lots of gross and painful images and videos on the Internet, but nothing comes as close as to what I saw that night. My beautiful sister wrapped in bandages, hooked up to all kinds of life support machines, with tubes coming out of all parts of her body. Reality didn't really hit me until I saw first saw her. I fell to my knees crying, and everything after that was really a blur.

My mom, dad, and I, along with other close family members, spent the night in the hospital, each taking turns going into her room to stay, to talk and to comfort. Looking back at my life, this night at the hospital was probably the most scared I've ever been.

The doctors throughout the evening were monitoring all her vitals, with little machines making those horrifying and unidentifiable beeps and chirps, which only have meaning to the doctors and nurses. The only machine that I understood was her heart rate machine. Her pulse was so variable throughout the evening; it got as low as 45 but as high as 130.

The following morning around 6am I woke up to relieve my dad of his command, to let him freshen up and get a cup of coffee. When I saw Lauren I had that horrible feeling that something wasn't right. I don't know what it was, but I could feel it flowing through my veins. I knew something bad was going to happen. Not 15 minutes later, her heart rate machine stopped beeping and all other kinds of alarms started going off. Within seconds doctors and nurses were yelling as they ran into her room, kicking my mother and me out. We hugged each other as tight as we could, crying and trying to cover our ears to cover up the reality that my sister was in the room dying.

A few minutes later the doctor came out to deliver the word that my sister had died. I felt lifeless. My whole body went numb, and I honestly don’t remember the events that happened. She was 28 years old. Her ashes were scattered on the family estate in the mountains of western North Carolina, her favorite place in the world to escape life.

Ten years later, I don’t think anyone in my family has recovered, and I don’t think that we ever will. There will always be that void in our lives, those grandkids and nephews and nieces that we’ll never get to see on holidays and never get to spoil with love. I’ll never get to hear her talk about how she used to think she kicked my ass at Mario Kart.

The drunk man who hit her went to court and served three years for vehicular homicide, and lost his license for an additional two. Out of anger my parents had every intentions of slapping him with a civil suit to ruin his life as he had ruined theirs. Instead, they redirected their anger to form a foundation on her behalf, which raises and donates money to charitable organizations who campaign to stop drunk driving. Since the founding, we’ve received over $400,000 in donations, albeit mostly from family and friends.

In 2003 we received a call stating that the man who robbed my sister of her life lost his life also when he ran off the road (intoxicated, of course) and was involved in a 60mph collision with a tree. I wish I believed in Hell so that I could happily envision this man spending eternity burning and writhing in pain.

Its 2008 now. Lauren would be turning 39 years old on June 17. I always imagined her being a wonderful critical care doctor, with a husband that enjoyed watching Wolfpack football with my father and me, and with two kids, a girl and boy, running around causing trouble. What do I miss most? I think its hearing her voice and seeing her beautiful face. I miss that smile I got on my face when my phone rang and when I saw that it was her calling me. I miss those late night conversations about absolutely nothing (although she occasionally tried to give me advice on dating girls).

Lauren, you were truly a one of a kind person, and even though you are not with us anymore, your memories will live within us forever. I miss you more than you ever could imagine.

My girlfriend washed my eyeball last night

So last night, we're watching TV in bed, and she's cuddled up next to me with her head propped up on my left shoulder. I was watching football, and she not being a big football fan, was bored and looking around and doing other things. She played with my nipple rings for a few minutes, making sure they were perfectly straight, before she looked up at me and said, "Have you washed your eye recently?"

She's pretty good about reminding me to wash my eye every couple of weeks. It's quite easy to forget, but is something that definitely needs to be done. I replied that I hadn't done it lately but would do it sometime later on in the week. She sat up in bed a little bit from her comfy position and looked me in the eye and said "Can I do it for you?"

I was a little weireded out over that question... I mean, isn't that kinda like me saying "Can I change your tampon for you?" I chuckled at her question a little bit and then she reminded me that last year when she was helping me after my operation that she had dressed the wound, washed the temporary eye, and all that good stuff, and she would be happy to do this for me. Plus she said it's something that she liked to do

Still feeling a little odd about the whole situation, I nod and give her the OK. She jumps out of bed and skips like a 13 year old girl to my side of the bathroom (my sink and cabinets is on the right, hers on the left). She goes into the drawer where I keep all of my eye care supplies and returns with a little blue suction cup device, that looks like one of those suction cup darts that shoot out of toy guns.

I've got my head propped up on my pillows watching the Georgia Tech football game, so she crawls back into bed and asks me if I'm ready. I face her a little bit, look straight ahead as she ever so slowly moves the suction cup towards my eye. A couple of seconds later I feel a little pressure the left side of my face while she positions the suction cup over the iris, and then I can see her from my right eye looking over at her, slowly pull the eye out. Like clockwork, the little "pop" noise let me know that the eye was successfully removed.

Elena darted off to the bathroom again, mumbling the words to some Italian pop song, and stays in the bathroom for a couple of minutes. She then emerged drying the eye in a Kleenex. Returning to bed once more, she asks me if she can try putting the eye back in. Putting the eye back in is a whole different ballgame than taking it out, and takes a good amount of work to make sure it goes in correctly.

I reluctantly say okay, and she asked me to lay down flat. She used her left hand to spread open the eyelid and bottom of the eye socket open, and then ever so carefully placed the eye back in the socket. It always feels so weird once you put a clean eye in there, because the eyelid sorta sticks to the eye for a few moments.

Once it was placed back in, she asked me to look around to make sure it gets properly aligned, and within seconds of moving my eyes in a circle the eye secured its position to the movable implant and we're done.

I congratulated her and she was all happy that I let her do this for me. She then sternly reminded me that I need to make sure I clean the eye every couple of weeks out of habit. I know it's hard to remember, because when I wore contacts, my 2-week contacts became the 2-months contacts. Satisfied with her good deed, she propped herself back on my shoulder and fell asleep within minutes. I finish the game and then join her in the world of darkness.

3 days so far with my new eye

On Tuesday afternoon, I had an appointment with my ocularist who was making me a prosthetic eye. In a previous blog post, I talked about my original consultation and the fitting procedures. It was pretty gross how they shoved all this gook into the eye socket. Luckily my appointment today wouldn't require that.

My appointment was at 1:30, and was once again greeted by the technician who worked on me a few weeks ago. She was the one who cut that awful joke about me winking at her (when my eye was out, and the eyelid couldn't stay up itself). I wasn't offended, but it was just really stupid and I had no idea my eyelid was shut. I mean, it's not like I could see through it ;)

Anyways, I was still wearing the eyepatch and the clear acrylic conformer that the doctor put in during the surgery to help keep the eye socket from shrinking and changing shape. It's kinda gross when they remove it. When clean, it is crystal clear, but after it has been in your eye for a couple of weeks, there's all sorts of yellowish-green, slimy, translucent, mucous that covers the entire conformer, with speckles of dried blood sprinkled throughout. I think one of the main reasons they want me to wear the eyepatch is so I don't gross people out when they look at me :beatup:

Anyways, the technician reclined me in the dental-like chair, and started to undress my eye. She started with the eyepatch, and then took this little suction cup and grabbed onto the conformer, and yanked it out of my eyesocket. It made this squishy noise, followed by a small pop that made me lol a little bit. As expected, it was covered in mucous, but thankfully there wasn't any blood on it.

She took her watering gun and vacuum suction tube and started cleaning out the eye socket just as the dental hygienist does when they rinse your mouth after they use that horrible-tasting gritty toothpaste. Also, just as she did last time, she got her suction tube a little too close to the back of my eye, and rammed it into one of the nerve endings, which obviously hasn't receded back into my brain yet. I yelled out my obligatory "HOLY FUCK THAT HURTS," and she just shrugged and moved on. She sat me up to let any water drain out of the socket that she didn't suck up.

She finally left, and I waited about 10 minutes before the ocularist came in the room. In his pocket he pulled out a little tiny ring jewelry box looking container, and opened it up and there was a shiny eye looking right back at me. He picked it up and let me hold it and examine it closely. The concave-shaped prosthetic will fit into my eyesocket over the permanently-installed implant that is tied to my eye muscles. This will let the prosthetic eye move around in unison with my good eye in the general range of motion.

While I was examining the eye, he rolled over this little cart with a rotary tool with a bunch of attachments. He said it was time to see how it fit. He lifted up my eyelid and slid it into place. Already it felt so much better than the acrylic conformer that had been in there for the past month. There were a couple of edges that felt like they were putting more pressure on the side of my eye than the others, so he pulled it out with a tiny suction cup, and used his Dremel tool to grind and polish away the pressure points.

We did this for about 5 minutes, and then he checked the range of motion for the eye and implant. He videotaped this so that I could later see how well it moved. I did some general left-right, up-down exercises, and then clockwise and counter-clockwise rotations. He said things looked great, and then showed me the video. For the most part, the artificial eye followed my real eye very well. It did not move, though, when I would look to the extreme left or right, up or down. He said that's typical.

As we were finishing up, he gave me a care bag with a cleaning solution, a few removal suction cups, and some lint-free medi-wipes to dry off the eye before I put it back into my head. I was instructed to remove it once every other day for the first month, to clean it, and to give me practice putting it back in, and then afterwards take it out once every 2 to 3 weeks. He said I could tell that it was time for a cleaning, when my eyelid doesn't slide very easily over the surface of the eye (due to calcium deposits, and other buildups).

Before he let me go, he took me over to a chair in front of a mirror, handed me a suction cup, and told me to practice taking the eye out and putting it back in. He said that it's difficult for the first few tries, just like putting in a contact lens. He also said that he had a few pointers, but they require the use of 2 hands, and thought it would be best to try it with the way I think would work because I know what methods I can and can't do.

Pulling the eye out is no problem, and cleaning it is a cinch. Putting it in was more tricky because of my damn eyelid wanting to stay shut. I tried sliding it in from the bottom, pushing the eyelid up with the eye, and popping it in from the bottom. That didn't work well, and I ended up having to use the nub to push the eyelid and skin around the eye up as far as I could, and finally was able to slide the eye in with a few crazy moves. He had me do it a couple of times, and each time I got better at it. He said that I would be a pro at it in a month, and that I should be able to return to my normal activities, including running and swimming (although to be sure to wear goggles when I swim in case the eye falls out).

As I stood up to leave, I took a good look in the mirror with my new eye in, and for the first time in 6 years, my face actually looked normal! My real left eye was blinded (cloudy pupil) and diseased (blue/brown sclera). But now with the prosthetic, it looked like I had two normal, healthy eyes. I actually started to get a little emotional, and shed a couple of tears (out of my right eye only, of course :beatup: ). The ocularist handed me a tissue, and said that my tears of joy were the only thanks he needed to know that he did a good job. He shook my hand, and said to come back in 2 months for a checkup, or whenever I felt I had a problem.

My girlfriend who was waiting in the lobby came to greet me at the checkout counter, and took a good look at me. She said I looked so good, and started crying herself. I had a few more tears of my own, and then started to laugh when she said she is going to miss my pirate eyepatch, and that I'll now be Dr. Joe instead of Pirate Joe. ARRRRRRGH

The past few days have been really good for me. With my glasses on, you really can't tell that I have a prosthetic eye. I was somewhat concerned that it might fall out when I sleep, but apparently the eye fits pretty snug, and hasn't fallen out in the 3 days that I've had it. I'll learn about how well it stays in when I start running again (for the first time in over 2 months). It's also good that I got the eye in before Christmas, so I won't weird out all of my girlfriend's family in Italy :beatup:

I got fitted for a new eye today

After almost a month of healing, I went to an ocularist who is going to fabricate a new eye for me. Ever since the surgery, I'd been keeping this clear plastic conformer in the eye to help the socket keep its shape and to somehow promote the healing of the implant they put in there.

My eye doctor told me to practice taking the conformer out with a tiny suction cup and putting it back in, not only for practice, but to help keep things clean in there. Well, I was kinda grossed out by it, and never did it more than 2 or 3 times in the past month. I've just kept it covered up with a black eyepatch so I wouldn't have to think about it. One time, the patch came off while I was sleeping and the conformer fell out of my eye. We searched the sheets for 30 minutes before I found it at the foot of the bed

Anyways, I arrived at this guy's office, and when they called me back to the room, I was put in a chair that looked like a dentist's chair. The technician came back to introduce herself to me, and told me what the procedure was going to be like. She started off by removing the conformer with another little suction cup, and cleaned it off real good in some cleanser. She then started to clean out the eye socket with a mild soapy solution. It was a really gross feeling, because she would basically fill the socket up with water, and then use a little vacuum to suck all the water out. One time she got a little too close and poked the back of my eye socket. That hurt like a motherfucker.

Once everything was clean, she started to mix up this mixture of plaster and other kinds of coagulants, which was described to me as the same material used to make a mold of your teeth when you get braces. She was going to fill my eye socket up with that goop to make a mold of my eye.

Once she got the stuff to the right consistency, she scooped a whole bunch of it on a spatula and started to slather it all inside the eye socket. I don't know how she fit all of that in there, but she did, and had to sit perfectly still for 4 minutes while it solidified. Now, I've felt a lot of gross, disgusting things in my life, but feeling this cold putty going into a place where my eyeball used to be is probably the most disgusting feeling I've ever had in my life.

After the 4 minutes was up, she started to tap on the mold to see how firm it was. She decided to let it sit for another minute or two before she removed it. It was pretty awkward trying to talk to the technician while she was holding my head still. She was all like, how's your day going? And I couldn't help but say something along the lines about how it was going great, and how I was so excited to have my eye socket filled with this disgusting goop.

Finally, the mold had set, and she worked on carefully removing it from the socket, not to cause me any discomfort, but also to protect the mold. She looked at it, and that she would take it back to the lab for processing, and to wait for the ocularist to meet with me. She washed out the socket once again, removing bits of plaster that had flaked off, and sat me upright in the chair. She started laughing, and pretended to be all flattered. I said I didn't understand, and she said that I was winking at her. She said she was joking, and reminded me that my eyelid was shut because there was nothing in the socket. I couldn't tell that it was shut, and tried to open it with no luck

About 30 minutes later, the ocularist came in, introduced himself to me, and showed me what he had been working on in the lab. He somehow took the mold from my eye, and made a firm, waxy lens-shaped mold of what he said my eye would look like. The wax allowed him to put it in, see how it fit, and make changes before he sent it off to be made.

We started the process of sculpting the pink wax as he continually would put it in the socket, take it out, and repeat. Over and over and over he would ask me how it felt, if I could open and close my eyelid (I couldn't tell, he just asked me to try to and he would see if it was open or closed). The wax mold, after he tweaked with it for about 20 minutes, actually didn't feel uncomfortable when it was in me, and was 10x better than that generic conformer I had been wearing.

He said that he has all he needs to make my final eye, and said I was good to go. Unfortunately, he put the uncomfortable conformer back in my eye and said to keep it in until next week when the eye was made. Before he let me leave, he took several pictures of my remaining eye to get an idea of the color and how it looked so that he could start painting the acrylic eye once it was made.

So, with all that said and done, it looks like I'll have my new eye made and installed by late next week (or the week after) contingent to another final fitting when I go in next week. I made sure that he knew I was going to be leaving the country in mid-December for Christmas, and that I needed to look as normal as possible when I meet a lot of my girlfriend's family and friends in Italy (read: NO EYE PATCH). He said he understood completely, and that he would do his best (as if he wouldn't do that anyways).

My even more recent emergency surgery

Well, I'm finally out of the hospital and have been home for a few days now after a having emergency surgery to repair my newly-installed ocular implant.

To recap from my old blog post from a couple of weeks ago, I had my left eye removed at the beginning of the month, and in its place was an implant to try to make an artificial eye look as real as possible. The surgery wasn't bad, I was home just after one day, and I thought all was well on the road to recovery.

During the week after the first surgery, every day my dad helped me remove the eye patch and help clean the eye socket and put in some of the antibiotic ointment around the area to promote healing. I only had to keep this up for about a week, until my doctor's appointment on Tuesday, October 10. However, things started to get really interesting on Monday morning when I woke up. Although the area around my eye never really felt all that great, I felt something totally different than I had in the previous days. It was almost like a sharp, tingling discomfort that just felt really gross and awkward. I told my dad, and he decided to remove the eye patch and see what was going on.

He put on his latex gloves and started to remove the tape around the patch very slowly. As he pulled away the gauze, my eyelid was exposed and closed (when there's no eye in the socket, the eyelid cannot stay open, so it will be shut until I get the acrylic eye made, or a temporary outer layer to help support the eyelid). He noted that it looked a little swollen, and when he raised my eyelid as he had done several times before, something happened that we totally weren't expecting. I felt something slide out of the eye socket and dangle on my cheek. I couldn't see what it was, but knew it couldn't be good when my dad's face turned immediately scared, and said "holy fucking shit!" Blood started to ooze out of the eye, and I felt one of the sharpest pains I've ever experienced in my life.

It turns out that the thin membrane covered over the implant to protect it didn't stay in place, and 3 of the 4 muscles attached to the implant had detached themselves, and so the implant was dangling out of the eye socket with one tiny muscle strand.

I started to get very dizzy from the pain, so my dad immediately laid me on my back and "pushed" the implant back into my eye, put the patch on as good as he quickly could, and yelled to my mother to call the valet station to retrieve our car. He then went and got all of my medicine and supplies and put them in a Ziploc bag. My parents helped me get off the floor and walked me down the hall to the elevator. As we were approaching the lobby, some of the valet attendants and other employees helped carry my stuff and get me in the arriving car (we still are using the rental car, since mine was totaled and haven't looked for a new one yet).

We began the 25-minute journey up to the hospital, although I think we may have made it a little quicker than that. My dad said he drove much faster than he should have, and had his hazards on, so he was lucky he didn't get pulled over. Traffic wasn't bad, and the only time we had to slow down was going through the toll plaza. On the way to the hospital, my mother called my surgeon and told him what happened, and he said that he would come in to the hospital as soon as he could. We didn't call an ambulance or anything because we knew it would take longer for them to pick me up and then take me to the hospital. There's a public hospital down the road, but eww, I wouldn't go there unless I really had to.

Once at the hospital, some of the assistants put me in a wheelchair and luckily enough, they allowed my mom to stay behind and handle all the paperwork at triage, and immediately began to work on making me more comfortable until the surgeon arrived. I undressed and got into one of those skimpy hospital gowns, and a nurse was there to put an IV in my arm. He gave me something to relax me and to help ease the pain, and damn it knocked me out before I knew what was happening to me.

I don't know how long it was between when I got to the hospital and when my doctor finally arrived, but I was just waking up and hearing him talking to my parents. He had taken off the bandage and was examining what happened, and was afraid that my body was rejecting the implant. He wasn't sure why the membrane (to hold the implant in) broke/detached, but he thinks it was because I didn't have the conformer (a clear acrylic placeholder for the outer prosthetic). He originally didn't put one in because he felt that it would put too much pressure on the implant and stunt its healing process due to all the swelling I had. He also was afraid that my body was just rejecting the implant all together, and would have to go with one of the old-school glass eyes that people used until the implants were developed. The old eyes were completely stationary and didn't move with your other eye, whereas the new implants should have a fairly good range of movement.

He felt that his original diagnosis was correct, and even though he didn't like all the swelling he was seeing, he would put in the acrylic conformer and closely monitor me to make sure it doesn't pop out. A short while later, the operating room was ready, and I was given a nice dosage of anesthesia in my IV, and again I was out in just a couple of minutes.

My next memory was disturbingly familiar: waking up in a dark recovery room with my parents and girlfriend staring over my face. Again, I didn't have my glasses and couldn't really make out anything, but it was great to see that they were there with me again. I was also pleased to see that they had given me enough anesthesia so that I didn't wake up until after they had taken out the breathing tube (during my last surgery, I woke up early while the tube was still in, and they had to tie my arm down to prevent me from tugging on it).

I drifted out of consciousness again, and woke up later that afternoon in a hospital room. I don't remember much, but I do remember being very, very thirsty. My girlfriend put the straw to my mouth, and I took a couple of swigs, and I immediately had this very unsettling feeling in my stomach. Within seconds, I spewed out chunks of my breakfast (and probably the previous night's dinner) all over the hospital bed and the floor. I now know why they tell you not to eat anything before surgery. We pushed the call button on the remote control, and a nurse came in and helped get me cleaned up and put new sheets on the bed. I got a comfy new paper gown along with a new pair of those socks with rubber on the bottom of them.

I tried drinking some water about an hour later, and I immediately got that feeling in my stomach and threw up the remaining contents of my stomach. Luckily I had a bucket to throw up in, so I didn't make a mess all over myself. The on-call doctor didn't seem to be too concerned at the time, because I was being given fluids through the IV. He said to give it the night and see how the next day goes. I didn't care if I was drinking anything or not, because I was so strung out on the pain medicine I didn't really know or care what was going on.

The following morning (Tuesday), I tried to drink some more fluids and again I threw it up. I knew I didn't feel like eating any breakfast, but tried a Jello square anyways. It came back up shortly after, too. The doctor on call was starting to get concerned a little, noting that this behavior was highly irregular. My family and I were all like, "no shit." Anyways, I continued to rest in bed until later that morning my eye doctor came in to check on me to see how I was feeling and to see how the implant is holding up. This time with the plastic eye placeholder in, he noted that things were going well, and that I was even able to open up my eyelid (something I hadn't been able to do before). He took out the conformer to examine the membrane surrounding the implant, and said things were looking good. He put the conformer back in and put the pressure patch back on the eye. He also said that in terms of the eye, I would be ready to go home, but that I should stay a little longer until I can start taking in fluids by myself without throwing them back up.

Later that afternoon, I still wasn't able to keep any solids or liquids down, but I started to pee a lot. Every 20 or 30 minutes, I had the huge urge to drain my bladder, and was urinating much more than what was going into my body through the IV. The doctors were becoming increasingly concerned that if I couldn't start drinking soon that I may become severely dehydrated. They also told me I wasn't going to be going home that night.

I was still drugged up on pain medicine, and the doctors thought that perhaps I was having a negative reaction to the medication. They decided to cut back on it, even though I would feel a little more discomfort to see if I had any improvement. I didn't, and in fact I started to feel worse. Later that evening, I started feeling really sick on my stomach and nauseated. My stomach was completely empty, so my attempts of throwing up ended in painful dry heaves that came every 45 minutes or so. I was given some medicine for nausea, and something to help me relax, and aside from getting up to pee once an hour, I had a relatively good night, until early Wednesday morning.

Early in the Wednesday AM I woke up extremely cold and my body completely numb below my chest. My fingers were also tingling with the 'needles' you get when your arm or leg goes to sleep. My girlfriend who stayed the night with me called the nurse when I woke up. She came in to see what was wrong and immediately asked if I had to pee. I didn't, but she told me to try, and the pee was an orange color. She said that I may have a kidney infection or something along those lines, which would explain why I peed so much throughout the evening and night. They gave me a shot and by lunchtime my body started to feel better, and I warmed up a bit. I don't know what they gave me, but I really started feeling better! My eye doctor also came in, examined my eye, and said things were looking good in that area, too! They decided to keep me one more night to see how my condition is.

Later that afternoon, I continued to try to take in some fluids, and over time I was able to drink a couple of ounces. I even was able to keep down a single, wonderful, lime Jello square.

That evening, my dad and Elena went back to my apartment, and my mom decided to stay with me for the night. I still couldn't see anything because my glasses wouldn't fit over the eyepatch, but damn it was good to be feeling better.

The following morning, the on-call doctor came in to check on me, and was happy to see that everything was going well. The eye doctor came in an hour later, changed my bandages, and cleared me for discharge from the hospital.

My dad showed up at the hospital to help get me home, and my parents accompanied me alongside my wheelchair and the nurse pushing me to the pick-up area. My dad said he was going to go get the car, but I remembered what happened last week when we got in a bad wreck. I suggested a taxi, so my dad whistled for a cab and when it came near, the license plates said Fresh and it had dice in the mirror. If anything, I could say that this cab was rare, but I was like 'naah forget it. Yo holmes, to Bel-Air."


















































Just kidding

The trip home on Thursday morning was uneventful, and the valet guys were kind enough to help us get all of my stuff into the condo. I was so weak from not eating anything for 4 days so I crawled into bed and slept. The pain medicine also helped keep me nice and sleepy, so no complaints there.

Over the next couple of days, I started to get more energy, and was eating and drinking more every day. By Saturday, except for this huge pressure patch on my eye, I felt pretty normal. I still look like I got beat up by a bunch of thugs, so I don't like looking at myself in the mirror yet I did have a little problem with anxiety, but that's due to me not taking my medication properly while in the hospital. I don't know why they didn't want me to take Prozac while hooked up to IVs and on pain medication. Maybe there were some possible adverse reactions...

Once I got my appetite back, I've been having these really really strange cravings. I had my mom fix me a tuna and peanut butter sandwich, and at the time, was one of the best sandwiches I have ever had in my life. My tartar sauce craving came back, and I ate like a whole bottle of the stuff with a few Fillet O' Fish sandwiches from McDonald's. Yesterday I wanted some pizza rolls, but also something sweet, so I dipped them in chocolate syrup. Heaven. Today I Beenie Weenies mixed with mayonnaise and honey mustard. My mom almost threw up over that combo, but damn it was so good. I'll probably take some serious craps here in the next day or two, given that all this medicine hasn't made me constipated as hell.

I'm also hoping that my sex drive will pick up soon. I'm sure it's the medication and the recovery, but I haven't had any sexual thoughts or desires since my first surgery on 10/02. I can't even get a boner

As for work, I'm still taking time off, although I'm going to be swamped when I eventually get back. My supervisor came by again yesterday to see how I was doing, and told me to take as much time as I needed. I was scheduled to give some more interviews late next week, but he said he would find someone else to take my place. I think the real reason he came by was to resume his argument with my father, whose political views are somewhat... hypocritical. He hates GWB with a passion, but will always praise him because he's saved him a lot of money over the past few years. But anyways, he and my boss got in a heated discussion last week, and got into one again yesterday. They both enjoyed it, though, and sat on the balcony smoking cigars and drinking whiskey for over an hour.

As for what's coming up in the next week or two, I will be visiting my eye doctor regularly to make sure everything is still going well, and have scheduled an appointment during the first week of December with an ocularist who is going to take a mold of my eye socket and begin the procedure of fabricating the outer part of the prosthetic eye. I also hope that my sleep schedule will return to normal as I start getting off of the pain medication. I've been sleeping a lot during the day, and so I'm waking up at 3 and 4 in the morning and can't go back to sleep.

This weekend, we're going to start looking at buying a car to replace the one that got totaled a couple of weeks ago. I have no idea what I'm in the market for, but it will be good just to look around and see what's out there. My parents also mentioned going home sometime. I'm being selfish in saying that I hope they will stay for at least a few more weeks. There's no possible way I could have gone through all this by myself (or even with just my girlfriend), and I am eternally grateful for anything and everything they have done for me.

My surgery among other things

The reality of my eye-removal surgery set in when my parents flew in from San Francisco to take care of me. When I first greeted my parents at the airport, I could tell they were already "saddened" in their own ways, for they knew this wasn't going to be a pleasure visit. My mom was crying and my dad was very quiet, and we had a very emotional drive back to the condo. My girlfriend, Elena, is also very emotional, and started crying when she saw my mother crying. I had made some reservations at this really nice restaurant, so we got dressed in our formal-wear and decided to walk to the establishment rather than drive.

I think my mom took some sort of upper, because her mood changed dramatically from the time we picked her up at the airport to when we were at dinner. That's a good thing. Dinner was great, and my mom got into one of her "shopping" moods to drown away any problems she is having. She decided that she wasn't happy with the appearance of my condo's kitchen and living room, and she wanted to do a partial renovation of it.

The next day, I went in to work, and left early because my mom called and wanted me to accompany her and her shopping assistant as she shopped for new kitchen appliances. She wanted to get a new countertop, refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, stove, oven, and possibly new flooring for the kitchen and foyer hallway. I dreaded it, but knew she would appreciate me being there, so we went shopping all over Atlanta to find the perfect appliances. She sent my dad out to buy a new TV, but I wasn't allowed to go with him, probably because she knew I would have more fun with him (he was going to play some golf, too)

My mom's emotions were a problem on Saturday, too, when we went to visit some of their friends in Duluth, GA for dinner. She ended up taking a tranquilizer when she got home so that she would fall asleep.

Sunday, things were real quiet, relaxed, and I wasn't too concerned about what was going to happen the next day. I went for a run, and we just had a nice, quiet day at the condo. I wasn't supposed to eat any real heavy foods or drink a lot of fluids, so we just snacked on junk food all day. The cutoff time for any food or drink was at 6pm, although the doctor said if my throat got real dry that I could take a couple of sips of water. I ended up staying up pretty late online, and went to bed around 1am. I was told that I needed to remove any piercings, etc that I had before the surgery, so my Elena helped pry open and remove my nipple rings. I scored some last-minute pity sex before we fell asleep,

I had to be at the hospital at 7am, so we got up at 5:30, showered, dressed, and packed a little overnight bag for me. The drive to the hospital wasn't bad because we were heading outside of town. It was amazing how crowded the highways were at 6:15am. I'm glad I don't have to drive to work!

I got put into this little room where I had to strip down and put on only a thin gown and these little socks with rubber on the bottom so I don't slide around the floor and fall down. They had a little TV in the room, and I was hanging out there for about 20 minutes with my family and Elena, until a nurse came in to put an IV in my arm. I've heard horror stories about doctors removing the wrong eye, so I had Elena draw an arrow pointing to the bad eye and write 'BAD' with a sharpie marker on my forehead. The doctor came in and just laughed, and said that I didn't have anything to worry about. He said that it's procedure for two doctors to examine me and identify which eye was the bad one. A few minutes later, and a nurse came in and put something in my IV, and that's all I remember.

The next instant, or so it seemed, I was in a dark room with my arm tied down to my side. I had a tube down my throat, and couldn't talk or see. The nurse tried to calm me down and I drifted back into unconsciousness. I woke up again, this time with my arm untied, and the tube out of my throat, and was greeted by Elena and my parents all smiling at me. My face was numb, and I couldn't feel anything other than this huge pressure feeling on the left side of my face. The pain medicine must have been really strong, because I remember I was feeling great. My vision was super blurry because I didn't have my contact in, or my glasses on. I was told I couldn't have my glasses because they wouldn't fit over the thick bandages covering my left eye. The nurse later apologized for having my arm restrained, but apparently I had woken up early and tried to pull out the breathing tube, so they had to tie my arm down to keep me from hurting myself. I don't remember doing that!

A short time later, I was rolled into my hospital room for the night for observation, and still drowsy, I slept for a good while afterwards. The doctor came in a short while later to tell me how the surgery went. He said things went very well, and that he decided to go ahead and try the ocular implant. He also said that my eye was a real mess from all the infections and surgeries I previously had, but felt that the eye would be able to support the implant with what he thought to be a 60% probability of success. If not, he said it's no big deal to remove it, and can usually be done under local anesthesia. He left and said he would check up on me the following morning before I was discharged.

I vaguely remember my dad saying that he had to go run a few errands, and that he would be back later that evening. Elena and my mom stayed in the room with me the whole afternoon, and watched about 8 hours of Murder She Wrote on one of the hospital's special channels. I remember trying to watch a little bit of it, because I love that show, but unfortunately because I couldn't see clearly, Jessica Fletcher was nothing but a big yellow blur on the screen. I love the theme song. A few hours after being placed in my room, the general anesthesia wore off and I started having some discomfort where my eye used to be. I called in the nurse and she shot some stuff in my IV, and I was fast asleep again. My mom really was doing good, and I was proud of her for being so cheerful and upbeat throughout the whole day. My dad came back later that evening and brought Elena some dinner, and my parents soon went back to my condo downtown for the night. The hospital food service brought me some nasty hospital food. I don't remember what they brought me except for some green Jello and a carton of milk. I didn't feel like eating anything, but did eat a square or two of Jello to help my sore throat from the breathing tube.

Elena really pampered me in the hospital, and did everything for me. She helped me get out of bed to go to the bathroom, fluffed my pillows, adjusted the TV volume and bed level. She wouldn't even let me reach for my water mug. She kept calling me Dr. Pirate Joe and said that I was her little pirate (in her sexy Italian accent), but that the bandages should have been black instead of white. The nurse came back every couple of hours to check me out and give me some more medication to help me sleep throughout the night.

The following morning, my parents came back to the hospital at around 6:30 to 7am, and my doctor came in around 7:30. He gave me a checkup, removed my bandages and inspected the eye socket and the implant. He said things were looking good, and cleaned up some of the dried blood that was around the area. He got a little too close to a sensitive area and I jerked back real hard and almost fell off the bed. He apologized, and put on a smaller bandage so that my glasses would fit over them. My vision was still blurry even with my glasses on, and he said that it should improve in the next 24 hours. My dad got to take a peak into my eye socket and made the generic 'ewww, that'sawesome' comment. The doctor just smiled and said it will look like a real eye once the implant heals and I get the cosmetic cover for the implant fabricated. He also told me to keep the pressure patch on for another week, until my next appointment, and then I'll have a smaller patch to wear for a few more weeks. He gave me some supplies for me to change it once a day, and some ointment to squirt into the eye socket once a day.

I put on some fresh clothes, and took some pain medicine, and a nurse wheeled me out to my car at the hospital's main entrance. We got into a little traffic on the way home, because we were heading into town with the rest of the rush hour traffic.

Instead of heading straight to my place, we got off a couple of exits early so Elena could pick up a few things from her condo in Buckhead. We were driving down Peachtree Road, and crossing over Piedmont Road, and all of a sudden I see a car ramming into the right side of my car. I don't remember anything after that, except waking up strapped down in an ambulance a few minutes later not knowing where I was. My mom and Elena were in the ambulance with me, and I got real upset because I didn't know where my dad was. They assured me that he was fine, and he stayed behind with the car and to talk to the police. I also couldn't see anything real clearly, and panicked, not realizing that my glasses had fallen off and broken during the accident. They told me that a car full of Mexicans had ran through the red light and smashed into the side of my Jeep, knocking the car real bad. Elena was sitting right behind me, and she got some of the impact, too, and is afraid she had broken her arm. They think my car is totaled. The ambulance was apparently going to take us to the public hospital downtown, which is kinda nasty and rundown, so we persuaded them to take us back to the hospital we had just come from, so my doctor could check me out. Elena and I went different ways in the ER once we left triage, and my doctor came down to give me a look over and make sure nothing bad happened to my eye. Fortunately, nothing was wrong, and another emergency room doctor said I might have a mild concussion because of my early confusion and unconsciousness, but a day of rest would be the only treatment I would need.

Elena, however, did in fact break her arm and we waited for her to be x-rayed and have her arm set and casted by an orthopedist. It was a hairline fracture along one of the bones in her forearm, and wasn't very serious. She just has to stay in a small cast for 3-5 weeks and she'll be better than new.

While we were getting ready to check out of the hospital, my dad showed up and got a taxi van to take us back to my condo. This time, we took a slightly different route and got there with no problems. The valet attendants were really nice and helped us get into the condo with all of our stuff. My mom got me my spare pair of glasses, and apparently the wreck knocked my vision back to normal, for I could see quite clearly now with my glasses. My dad escorted Elena and me through the house and towards my bedroom, acting as a guide to show us what all he had done the day before when he left the hospital. I noticed a gigantic new TV out in the living room, a new flat top stove, oven, and microwave, and that he had moved the old plasma TV from the living room into the bedroom. He also had the old TiVo installed in the bedroom so we could watch all our programs while recuperating. I gave both of them a hug and thanked them, and then they put us both to bed. It was time for me to take another percocet, so I was fast asleep. I woke up a while later and tried to watch a little TV, but because I kept dozing off, I must have played through Prison Break 3 times before I finally got all of it in.

My dad came in and told me that the insurance people had called and declared my car as totaled. It was a 2004 Jeep Overland Grand Cherokee that was a graduation present when I finished my BS's at NCSU. He told me not to worry about it, and to think about what kind of car I might want to replace it with. For the time being, he was provided a rental car from the insurance company, so that there was no real rush. Plus, I doubt I'll feel like driving myself anytime soon. I leaned over to see how Elena was doing, and she was still asleep from the pain medication she had taken because her arm was hurting.

I felt like getting out of bed and was really hungry. I had a really strange craving for KC Masterpiece BBQ chips and Oreos. It makes a perfect sweet and salty/spicy combination if you eat a chip right after an Orero. They were simply Heaven. My mom then drew me a nice bath, and I soaked in the tub for over an hour until my fingers were all nice and wrinkly. I wanted to wash my face and hair (or what little bit of it I have), but was afraid to get my bandages wet, so I just used a soapy cloth. After my bath, I glanced at myself in the mirror for the first time. I looked AWFUL. I had intentionally avoided a mirror because I wasn't sure when I wanted to see my new face. My cheeks were all swollen, and my eyes were black. I look like I had gotten in a huge fight and gotten my ass handed to me. Even though I knew the swelling and bruising would go away, I started to cry, and got really, really sad. My heart then started to pound, and it got difficult to breathe. My anxiety had started to get to me, and I started to panic. I sat down on the edge of the tub and yelled for someone because I thought I was going to pass out and fall on the bathroom floor. Elena came in and got some of my anxiety and depression medicine that I hadn't taken in 3 days, and also a Xanax that my doctor had given me for anything immediate. I climbed into bed, counting numbers until my breathing returned to normal. I decided I would stay away from a mirror for a few more days. I was glad to see that Elena was feeling better. While I was in the bathroom taking a bath, she had gotten up to talk to my parents, and check her email. The pain wasn't that bad anymore she said.

The Xanax combined with some of my pain medicine knocked me out, and I slept through most of the night. I don't remember when Elena came to bed. I don't remember waking up any during the night except once to use the bathroom. I was still drowsy, so I didn't take anything else to help me sleep.

When I woke up on Wednesday, I noticed that even with my glasses that my vision was again pretty blurry. I saw some red blurs on my pillow case, and Elena said there was lots of blood on the pillow and lots of blood on my face. I called up the doctor and told him that it bled, and he said that this was actually normal for some reason, and for me not to worry. He just said to continue to use the healing ointment and the saline cleaning solution to wash off all that dried blood inside the eye socket. I had my dad help me take the bandage off, clean my eye, and re-bandage it. After the bandage was re-applied, it started to get really sore again, so I took some more pain medicine. Elena's arm was doing fine, and didn't take anything stronger than an over-the-counter Tylenol or Ibuprofen. The delivery men brought in a new refrigerator and dishwasher today, so the parents were working on getting that installed, cleaned, and transferring all the food from the old one to the new one. I lounged around on the couch for a few hours, playing with the new TV my dad had gotten. Other than being bigger, it really isn't any better than my old one, except that it will support the new 1080p HD format.

After lunch, my vision started to clear up, and I could read the small print on the TV, and eventually could read the text on my laptop screen to check my email. Being upright for so long started to make my eye have that painful throbbing feeling, so I decided to lay down on the bed, and I fell asleep for a few hours. I woke up later in the afternoon to more delivery guys bringing in new sofas and coffee tables. I loved my old leather sofa, for I had gotten it broken in just perfect. This one I'm going to have to start over again with

Around 7pm, I got a knock on the door, and it was my supervisor from work. He came by to see how I was doing, and to drop off one of those giant get-well-soon cards that was signed by hundreds of people, most of which I didn't know. It was a kind gesture, though, and it made me feel pretty good. He stayed for a while, and had a few drinks and snacks while he and my dad got into a fairly heated but light-hearted discussion over politics, the war, and whose financial dicks were bigger. (also, BigMan157, I gave him a copy of your resume and cover letter, and told him to take it to whomever he felt it would receive the most immediate attention. When I get into work sometime next week, I'll go make sure it was accepted by the HR folks).

After my boss left, I went to take another long bath. I didn't look in the mirror this time, and went to bed around 9pm. I took my medicine and a pain pill to make sure I have an uneventful night tonight.

And here I am, early Thursday morning, having gotten up at 4am not being able to go back to sleep. I've been playing on the Internet for a while, writing this, and doing some research about how my new eye will fit into the implant, and what the process is like. I also watched the Lost season premiere. I might try to see if I can get my parents to take me driving around today, to get some fresh air and to get outside of the house for a change.

Overall, I think things have gone pretty well, except for the nasty car wreck. Other than some general discomfort, the pain hasn't really been intolerable, or something I can't control. The doctor saying that the surgery was going to be a "walk in the park," wasn't exactly true, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the jaw surgery I had a few years earlier.

My interesting weekend with my girlfriend's relatives

This weekend, my girlfriend's ("Elena", 23) older sister ("Alessandra", 29) and her husband ("Christophe", 28) flew in from Paris to visit for the holiday. I had never met any of her family before, so meeting some of them was going to be a real treat, or so I thought.

Their flight landed at the Atlanta airport on Friday evening around 8:30pm, which I think would be a late flight flying west from Europe, but what do I know? Anyways, we make it to the airport just a few minutes before they arrive, and it was great seeing the joy in Elena's smile when she first saw her sister coming up the escalator from the tram to the baggage claim. Her husband was right behind her, and just by looking at him, I knew this was going to be a long weekend. He was dressed in what looked like very expensive clothes, dressed like a male model walking down a runway (isn't that what they're called?) at a fashion show. He had his sunglasses propped over his head, and his shirt collar popped.

Well, because Elena and her sister were busy hugging each other and going off in some Italian chit chat, I politely introduced myself to Christophe and shook his hand. He's about 4 inches taller than I am, and he looked down at me with a smug facial expression telling me that he thought I was a piece of trash. Of course my American tongue mispronounced his name, so he immediately corrected me with the most obscure pronunciation you could imagine for his name. I tried to carry on with the normal chit chat asking how their flight was, etc, and he just ignored me and said, "let's retrieve our bags and be on our way." Oh boy.

It was around 9:15 when we got in the car and on the interstate heading back towards town. Elena and I hadn't eaten, and her sister said she was hungry. Because we made reservations at a nice restaurant on Saturday night, we decided to go to a moderately-priced, nice little hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant in Buckhead that is one of our favorites. Dinner was excellent, just as it always is from this restaurant, and luckily Christophe and I didn't have to talk too much since Elena and her sister monopolized the conversation, catching up on old times. They were kind enough to speak in English so Christophe and I would have at least some sort of an idea of what they were talking about.

After dinner, Elena wanted to show them where she lived, so we drove up to her condo building in the heart of Buckhead. We parked and took the elevator down to the ground level, and spent about 20 minutes walking around the very-crowded Buckhead area, but didn't go into any of the establishments. We went back to her condo high up on the 17th floor, which has a great southern view of the distant Atlanta skyline. We sat down in her living room and talked for a few minutes, and then the girls got up and went into Elena's bedroom to get a few things and show her pictures. That left us guys all alone in the living room. Once we were alone, before I could speak a word, he said "there sure are a lot of black people in this city." I didn't really know how to respond, other than telling him that Atlanta's demographics were about 62% black, in addition to a very diverse population. I went on to tell him that MLK, Jr was born here, etc. He then asked me if I ever got tired of all of them, and I just sorta had a WTF response, questioning him why I would feel that way. He just sorta shrugged.

Anyways, we thankfully got off the topic of race, and asked him what he did back in France. I had a general idea, but didn't know all the details. He is finishing up his medical residency and is specializing to be a neurosurgeon. I found out that he liked talking about himself a lot, so I kept asking vague questions that he could go into great detail. This was a great time killer, and after about 20 minutes, the girls were ready to head on back to my place.

While Elena's condo has two bedrooms, it is a little cramped, so she asked if she and her guests could stay at my place, which is a little bigger with three bedrooms and a larger living area. Fortunately, I had a few days prior knowledge to the fact that they were going to stay at my place, so I was able to get my cleaning lady to come in, change the sheets on the guest bed, and clean up the place. So, we all pile back into my car and head back downtown to my place. I got the impression that Christophe comes from a well-to-do family, and lives a fairly nice life of luxury, and probably socializes with friends of the same social status, and also expects his wife's family and friends to be the same way as well. I've mentioned before that Elena drives a nice car, well I drive a Jeep. It's a nice Jeep, and I love it, but hey, it's no Mercedes or BMW on the "smugness" meter." He asked me if I chose to drive an American car or did it because of financial reasons. I explained how it was a gift from my parents, how I didn't really choose the car myself, and that I don't have a single problem driving an American car. He was just sorta like "OK."

I got the impression that Christophe likes to be impressed, and he obviously wasn't impressed with my car, so instead of parking the car myself, I decided to go to the valet station, let them take care of my car, and went in through the main entrance of my building which is a lot prettier than going up through the parking deck. When we get up to my condo on lucky floor #22, we get their luggage put into the guest bedroom, and his attitude changed completely. He actually came out and said "this place is nice," and couldn't stop looking out the windows of the night-time skyline. His apparent shallowness was satisfied by the fact that my ceiling fans had remote controls. He kept playing with them, saying how cool they were, and how he wants to get these for his place back in Paris.

Around 1am we went to bed, and finally the first night was over. Only 2.5 more days to go!

The following morning, slept a little late, and had a late breakfast/early lunch at my place. We watched a little TV until it was time to go to downtown to the new Georgia Aquarium. We ended up watching 2 episodes of the old Beverly Hillbillies, a surprisingly favorite show among Elena and her sister. Apparently when they were learning English at a young age, some of the American TV shows made their way over to Italy, and they would watch them in English with Italian subtitles. Another of their favorites was the Golden Girls, so my TiVo is almost filled up with episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies and Golden Girls.

We had a good time at the aquarium, even though I had been there before. Alessandra is really fascinated by marine life, so she was in heaven, which is why we stayed there for about 5 hours. We walked around the Centennial Olympic park, and showed them some of the places around there, like CNN, and we even tried to find the location of where the bomb went off :beatup: I don't think Christophe had a good time, and he kept commenting on how all the homeless people were black, and how dirty the city felt.

Back at my condo, we took showers and got dressed in our nice clothes (I bought a new tie for tonight :D ), and walked down the street to a restaurant called Park 75, in the Four Seasons Hotel. I hadn't ever been there before, but goddamn I had one of the best meals I had ever had. Elena and I both got the Surf and Turf, with bacon-wrapped bison and Maine lobster. Alessandra got a filet mignon and Christophe got a great-looking lasagna. He ordered a bottle of wine for the table, and of course he ordered a bottle of French wine, because he said that Americans just haven't figured out how to make a decent wine.

During dinner, he turned into a complete asshole. He started talking about George Bush, the UN, the war in Iraq, and how the US wants to run the world. And then he started talking in French, which conveniently I was the only one at the table who doesn't speak it, so I have no clue what he's talking about. All I know is that I picked up a few words like "Bush," "America," etc, and he had this smug smirk on his face. I asked Elena later that night what he said, and she said it would be better if she didn't say, for some of the comments were about me, and she didn't want me to be upset. Anyways, we decided to split the bill for dinner, and goddamn if that bottle of wine wasn't $107. In addition to our meals, I wasted close to $175 at dinner :mad:

After dinner, we walked up to the new Atlantic Station shopping center that they built a while back to see if there were any movies showing. We decided not to see anything, and walked back to my place. We looked through my DVDs, but couldn't decide on anything, so we just went to bed.

The following morning, we were invited to meet with Elena's good friend ("Jennifer", 22) and her family (the Bostwicks) up at the Country Club of the South in Duluth, GA for a nice Sunday brunch and to enjoy the activities up there. The Bostwicks were from London, and were very good friends with Elena's and Alessandra's father (who is also from London). I had some awesome eggs benedict, french toast, and unlimited prime rib. It was superb. After brunch, the men went out for a 12:30 tee time, while the women sat outside on the clubhouse patio, and enjoyed tea and lemonade. I didn't know to bring my golf clubs, so Christophe and I used an extra set that Dr. Bostwick had. We played the front nine, although I only played about 3 :beatup: before we went back to the clubhouse. Christophe was definitely much happier to be in a "white" part of town... On the way back down to Atlanta, I drove them around the area for a while, showing them various things around the Atlanta area that we hadn't gone to yet.

When we got back, Christophe got a little sick feeling in his head and stomach, so we decided we would rest for the remainder of the afternoon until it was time for dinner. While Christophe napped, Elena, Alessandra, and I went out to the pool and laid out/swam for a while. A few hours later, we went to a nice Italian restaurant called Villa Christina, and I had an awesome duck breast. Luckly, since Christophe was a little under the weather, he didn't get to talk too much about how much the US sucked compared to France. We went back to my place and went to bed.

On Monday morning, the last day of their trip, we met a bunch of Elena's friends from Emory at a nice little restaurant called the "R. Thomas Grille" in Midtown. It's another one of those good hole-in-the-wall restaurants that sits just inches away from the busy Peachtree street that specializes in organic foods. Poor Christophe was unfortunate enough to sit next to one of Elena's friends who was black, and you could totally tell that he was disgusted to be next to her. Fortunately for me, I wasn't anywhere near him and didn't have to listen to him complain.

After a great lunch, we went back to my place so they could start packing their stuff. Instead of driving them back down to the airport, we walked down to the MARTA station and put them on the train that would take them straight to the airport. It was one final "haha you're around black people" to the pretentious, racist French bastard. It was great to see him leave, and hopefully I won't have to see him when I go to Italy for Christmas this year.

Once they left and we got back to my place to clean up a little, Elena told me what Christophe was saying in French that night at the restaurant. It turns out that he was making fun of me about how I was cutting my steak, and how fucked up my left eye looked with no pupil. I was actually shocked that he made a non-racist comment! I also asked her why he was so racist. She didn't know, and she didn't like it, but said that there's a lot of people in Europe that are pretty racist. When I went there a few years ago, I didn't meet anyone that appeared to be racist in any way, even against America. Well, many didn't really approve of the American government, but they were smart enough to know that the American people are different than the government.

I can't really decide if my weekend sucked or if I actually enjoyed it somewhat. It was great meeting Elena's sister; she was just as nice as Elena, and it was cool getting to know her better. I don't know how someone as nice as her married such of a pretentious cocksucker like Christophe... I've never had any beef with the French before, but this dude totally lived up to the stereotypes.