I returned to the general ward. I had expected this part of hospital life to be hard, but it too was unexpectedly uneventful. Each day, tests were done while IV lines and drains were removed one by one. The IVs were for nutrition, painkillers, and insulin: three lines in the back, neck, and left hand. The drains were for pancreatic fluid, two jejunostomy tubes, and a Winslow drain for fluid accumulating in the body cavity. Whenever I moved, all of them had to come with me, so even one tube removed felt like progress. Once only the pancreatic drain and one jejunostomy tube remained, and the holes from the removed tubes closed, I would be able to leave hospital.

I was not bored either. I continued whatever work I could do on the PCs I had brought. I had to prepare for an imminent move. I wrote notes about my hospitalization. I even worked on coding for this website.

On this day the steroid infusion ended. It apparently had both painkilling and mood-elevating effects. Once it wore off, pain and fatigue hit me hard. It felt like an unexpected setback, and it was the only period during this admission when I truly felt down. Every nurse I asked seemed to have known this would happen, though apparently they do not tell patients in advance.

There was considerable pain, especially at night, so I was given painkillers and sleeping pills. I had never taken sleeping pills before and wondered what they would do, but I could not really tell how they worked. This state lasted about two days and gradually settled.

My first visitors came: my boss and a colleague. They said I looked far better than they had expected. We talked about life after discharge. Everyone agreed that treatment should come first. I would return to work from home, but not think about a full return for the time being. Since we were in the hospital, we decided to discuss the details after I left.

I was told roughly when I would be discharged: the following week, the third week after surgery, even though I had been told before the operation that hospitalization might take one or two months. It seemed surprisingly early.

Three groups of visitors came that day. I laughed at a foreign colleague who brought comic books as a gift, explaining somehow that comics were the best way for Japanese people to pass time. In the end I never even knew what comics they were. I felt a little sorry for having absolutely no interest in them.

The hospital director made rounds and instructed that I should be discharged as soon as possible. Their policy was that patients recover more slowly if they stay in the hospital, so they should be sent home early. I had heard that this had become common in recent years, but it was still startling to be told so directly by the director. The doctors here are all very straightforward.

For the first time in a while, I breathed the air outside the building. Between meeting visitors and preparing for discharge, I stepped into the garden in my pajamas. It really was different from being inside the hospital. Life in the hospital was comfortable enough, but I began to long for discharge.

I was discharged on October 10. The hospital stay after surgery was less than three weeks. Since the first admission for testing had been September 11, it was one month even from that point.

But the surgery was not the end. It was the beginning. Chemotherapy would start two weeks later, on October 24.

Meeting the people who came to see me was a joy. Bosses, colleagues, juniors, people from professional associations, and people from my regular bar came. Almost everyone said I looked healthier than they had imagined, and that reassured them. I am grateful for their encouragement.

Because the expected stay had been one or two months, many people must have thought it was too early to visit. I hope they know that even that feeling alone made me happy. Surely none of them would complain about an early discharge.

Incidentally, insurance. Around the time we reviewed our housing situation, I had also reviewed insurance. I removed the savings part from the life insurance I had held until then, reduced it to a minimum, and instead bought medical insurance with a cancer rider. This time almost the full amount was paid, which helped greatly in an emergency. But when I calculated it, the amount I could claim was almost the same as the total premiums I had paid over twenty years. In other words, it was like withdrawing savings I had been accumulating for just such a time.

After analyzing the situation, my wife thought about her own insurance. Fortunately she had never had to make a claim. She decided to review and restructure her insurance coverage,, keeping only the riders that seemed necessary and saving premiums compared with the current plan.