Hello, there. Joe calling back from the dead.About two hours after my last LJ entry, in Cincinnati on 19 September, I went back to the hotel from fixing a kettle of vegan chili for the next day's party. I developed stomach pains that became all-thorax pain and then began an impressive bout of projectile vomiting. The last time I vomited was 1954, so I was pretty sure there was something wrong. I collapsed and Gay called 9-1-1. The last thing I remember was the ambulance crew coming through the door. I woke up more than three weeks later.They thought it was a twisted bowel, but once they opened me up they found acute pancreatitis, and it was touch and go for weeks, me in a coma on a refrigerated mattress (to keep fever under control). To make a long story short, I spent the next 52 days in two hospitals. Crept out yesterday.(Anyone curious about the details can check Gay's daily log of the disaster – http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.people.joe-haldeman&from=-10 It's beyond wonderful to be rid of the hospital room, the IV drips, the wretched immobility. Not to mention the scorns that a meritorious patient from th'unworthy take.The condo that Joel Zakam has graciously loaned us is comfortable as can be, and has a nice woodsy view out back.Speaking of woods, I'm not out of them, quite. I get tired walking across a room (but I can do it, without the walker). I have the clumsy ileostomy bag for another six months or so, and some pretty serious surgery in store then, when they reattach my large intestine. (They removed about 18" of it, including the appendix as a little bonus.) And of course there's pain.I have a tube stuck in my upper abdomen, about the place where guys used to get shot on TV. A nice .32 caliber hole – feh! Ladies' gun – with an alarming plastic tube slithering into my innards, sucking out pancreatic fluid and dead tissue into a vacuum bulb. They're pulling the tube out a couple of inches at a time, which sort of establishes a lower limit for returning to Florida. I have to go back to the hospital two weeks hence – outpatient! – to get a CAT scan before they pull the tube out another inch. Then more scanning as they slowly work it out. So it will be closer to Christmas than Thanksgiving when we get back to Florida.I couldn't have picked a better place than Cincinnati, to fall over almost dead. We have an army of friends here from science fiction fandom, who have been as dedicated as an army. The city itself is rated #2 in the country for pancreatic medicine. And when I'm in a little better shape, I'll hadj over to Skyline Chili and get a bowl of the weird cinnamon spaghetti sauce that they call chili here.My heartfelt thanks for everyone's good thoughts and prayers. Even a lifelong atheist can recognize the healing power of love, in whatever form it's sent.Joe