While the first day of my knee surgery adventure was coloured with lollipops and rainbows and provided endless praise and adoration for the world of modern medicine, Day 2 seemed more like a fire at a tire dump, and the plume of smoke was so dark and thick it could be seen from space.

I nearly got through the entire first day without a hitch or any medication and then, as I lie in bed gloating and patting myself on the back and thinking I was Superman, I felt a sensation in my limb, followed by a twitch, and a poke, and then some heat. The nerve block that the anesthesiologist had administered was seemingly starting to fade, so I cracked the lid on the bottle of meds and took my first pill as advised. I’m a newbie to pain medication, so I naively joked with my family that I was going to head downstairs with a blanket to watch the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, thinking I was about to embark on an enjoyable drug-enhanced ride. The reality is that only thing I watched that night was the ceiling in my bedroom. The drug slowed me down to 48.6% of my normal speed and turned me into a bowl of porridge, and although I felt no pain, the extensive swelling in my leg made it so tight it was an inanimate object, and trying to sleep with a hardwood log for a leg was impossible. Even the stupidest pirate removed his wooden leg before bed, no?

By the time morning rolled around and I stumbled painfully out of bed, I had slept maybe a few hours off and on. In addition to turning my head to cream corn, the opioids had seemingly acted as a diuretic throughout the night, causing me to have to hobble to the washroom to pee so frequently that my lips resembled raisins come morning. My leg was stiff and sore now, my head full of cobwebs and I was cranky as shit, and this was the high water mark for the day. My throat even felt like I had gargled with razor blades from being intubated the day prior during the general anesthetic. A smart and reasonable person would’ve turned his back on everything, popped a pill and gone right back to drooling in bed and staring at the ceiling, but “smart” and “reasonable” are words not always associated with me, and when the coffee pot beckoned, I listened. With every sip, I gained a little more courage and enthusiasm and by mid-morning the self-imposed pressures to pull up my big boy pants took over and I decided to try to lead a normal day despite anything being normal.

I attempted to work for several hours in the morning. This was an exercise in futility, as I was foggy and incoherent and had a much shorter attention span than normal. I then decided to take Jack to the river to swim because I could no longer bear to see him following me around the house guilting me with his sad eyes. My dog is a master at psychological warfare, and it was easier for me to cave to his persistent demands than try to explain to him that I was unable to do what he wanted because of my surgery. He would never let up, so I gave in. Dog 1, gimp 0.

I then foolishly ran some errands and did groceries and cooked an elaborate meal, and even returned to work in the afternoon in between a series of short uncomfortable catnaps. These ambitious decisions were entirely of my own doing and my family was not complicit in this train wreck in any way. In fact, they were pleading with me at every corner to slow down the ship, but the autopilot was engaged and off I went until the derailment happened as we sat down for dinner.

There was no slow, grinding burn to hell, and I went from “seriously, I’m fine” to having my drive axle shear off the chassis in a spilt second. Superman lost his cape or, at very least, it instantaneously evaporated in the wash. I apologized to the family and got up from the dinner table, hobbled upstairs, and popped a pill. Within 30 minutes I was in bed and back staring at the ceiling in a coma, however contrary to the night before I’m pretty sure I slept for 11 hours straight with my eyes open.