Honestly, the most surprising thing about my stay at Cedars was how big my room was. I'd later learn the 8th floor is the celebrity floor, so I'm not sure how my luck put me there but I'm not complaining. Beyond the size of the room, the location gave me a nice view of the sunrise each day.

I honesty don't remember much about that first day of recovery because the meds left me in a bit of a haze, but I know Sheena and our family friend Bruce came by to visit. I remember them making we wear these leg massager things until I was able to stand (so I wouldn't get blood clots from laying down), the nurses coming in each hour, and that the menu for ordering food was on a tv channel that rotated items. The food itself was you know, hospital food but that's generally not what I'd leave a Yelp review for in this situation.

I also got a visit from one of the doctors on the surgical team and my oncologist to check in on me and see how everything was looking. Also much appreciated.

At some point in the day they helped me out of bed to see if I could stand and walk around, which thankfully I was able. And that also meant I could go to the bathroom on my own. I'd been putting off looking at the scars because I don't do well with that stuff, but also I just hadn't been mentally ready for it. So I continued not to.

The day went surprisingly fast though, probably cause of the haze. The biggest discomfort was not having my full lung capacity and any random sneeze or cough hurt like a mother even with the meds.

The final thing is if you look at the table to my right in the photo, there's this little plastic thing you breath into that measures your lung capacity. I was blowing 500 mL at this point which is what I was blowing right after my lung partially collapsed in 2014. Normally for me it's around 2500 mL.