Neel Parikh

So it’s Thursday evening and I’m sitting on my couch catching up on Top Gear. I’ll likely be doing some iteration of the same thing until September. Why? Because that’s pretty much all i can do: no climbing, no volleyball, no working out. Basically I’ve been told that I can’t have any fun the next month or so.

Rewind about 10 days, and you’d find me lying in a hospital bed in Vancouver having just been wheeled out of the OR where I had my appendix removed… (of course, superbly timed immediately before I was planning on heading out to Squamish for some epic climbing with some epic people). Apart from being bummed out and sidelined from the fun stuff for the what’s left of summer, I have to say it’s pretty damn great to be Canadian. Diagnosis from 4 different doctors, ultrasound, surgury and a day in recovery. Total bill… $0!

Today… 10 days post-op, I’m back in Toronto and everything seems to be healing up nicely. The scar doesn’t look like it’ll be that bad (I hear chicks dig scars anyway), and it no longer feels like the world is going to end every time i sneeze. phew. my only pressing concern now is a moderately sized lump of scar tissue that seems to be forming in the tissue layer under the incision site. It basically feels like a giant knot. I’ve been told that’s pretty normal and with a bit of encouragement (kind words, dinners out, and the occasional massage) it will soften up and will eventually be unnoticable. I’ve also been told that whatever is left of my appendix is likely sitting in a bio-waste lab somewhere in Vancouver, and will continue to for the next 5 years. They apparently keep that stuff for legal reasons. How crazy is that?!?