Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: The Little Victories

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Michael Kane

With music, you often don’t have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don’t know why. ~ David Byrne

Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: The Little Victories

It was a hectic day in my recovery world today. I had seven different visitors which is absolutely a new record for me. During the day I posted a comment about wearing my first non-button up shirt and they replied I guess it’s the little victories, and it absolutely is about the little victories. As with all big challenges whether it’s hiking the Appalachian Trail or recovering from open heart surgery it’s always the mental aspects that catch you off guard and make things hard. So in terms of recovering from heart surgery, each of these little victories helps you see that things will get better and that there is healing at the end of this road. So tonight I just want to celebrate some of these over the last week.

First and foremost, my community of support has been absolutely amazing. Thank you to all of you. Today the person who picked me up for my cardiologist appointment brought their 20 year-old son. A really wonderful young man, as we neared the end of the return trip he said to me, “wow, now I get all the hype, you’re a cool dude.” I’ll take that from any 20 year-old as a 60 year-old grouch.

There are no stitches or staples from my surgery, I’m held together by super glue. So the glue has to be scrubbed and picked off, sort of like when you peel skin after a sunburn. Made some great progress on that today and it’s really, fucking weird. In case you didn’t know, super glue was actually used during the Vietnam War for exactly this reason, here’s a link to the history of super glue.

While I thought things had proceeded in average fashion, my cardiologist told me today that I got out of the hospital faster than any patient she’s had who had this process. I was really proud of that, I worked hard to be ready for this process.

Tonight, I did the longest walk of my recovery so far. Not really that far, but as that distance increases I get happier.

Today I decided to really cook. I make my own meals every night, but with all of the gifted vegetables starting to age and diminish and having seen an African Pepper Sauce recipe while I was in the hospital, I made an African bean stew tonight. After I had already said I didn’t need anything else it hit me that I really wanted some good bread with this dish, my last visitor of the day walked in with a really good loaf of sourdough bread, serendipity!

I’ve also been working very hard to express my gratitude to people, so today, I sent out some thank yous, texts and made a few calls just to say thanks. And thank you all for being here and following along.

Small positive steps is the way! This is know. ~ Rev Kane

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The Deliberate Progress of Patience and Intentionality

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Michael Kane

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored. ~ David Byrne

The Deliberate Progress of Patience and Intentionality

As most of you are quite aware I’m at home recovering from open heart surgery. It’s my fifth day home, my eleventh day since surgery. The excitement and fanfare of the surgery are past, the big one, I didn’t die on the table. The second is that there are no obvious complications so far except some bowel liquification from one of my medicines but the home health nurse check ups have been positive, my phone appointment with my surgeon’s office went well and tomorrow morning I have my first post-surgery appointment with my cardiologist as my primary care gets handed over to her. While tomorrow sets up to be hectic as all get out, I’m excited for the appointment and my first real excursion away from home since returning, FIELD TRIP! I’m also planning as part of it to stop at a drive thru and gets some damn french fries as a treat, more excited than I should be about that, but seriously, hot, greasy salty fries and a small coke, yeeessssss.

Mornings are good, especially now as the quality of my sleep is improving. I’ve worked out a good schedule with the Tylenol I’m using for pain management, happily haven’t had to go any harder, and having the new adjustable bed I just bought is a game changer. That was pure providence, found a store with one in stock two miles from my place, $100 off the price as part of their labor day sale, 50% off on delivery and installation since I was so close and the disassembly and removal costs were waived when I mentioned I was recovering from heart surgery, oh and the whole deal start to finish, from call to set up, four hours. I do seem to sunset every afternoon and end up a little loogey at night, and because I’m not super active yet I’m also not super tired and so early evenings have kind of sucked I exist in this haze of being tired, but not worn out and really not wanting to sit down. It’s also the time of day when things slow down, my body aches catch up to me but my mind keeps spinning.

So I’ve started trying after dinner to be a bit more active, after dinner I do my evening walk, take my meds and then try and do some writing standing up. I’m not at a point where I can find a comfortable position for my laptop, so it’s sit down at my work desk or stand up. Standing up keeps me a little more alert, helps keep my blood pressure up a little bit and I can move a bit to the music. Without writing on my lap with TV as background I’ve been putting on music while I write. Tonight I’m writing to the Talking Heads, hence the quote from idiosynchratic and brilliant David Byrne above.

The one thing that has really hit me in this process of existing and healing after the surgery is the patience, intentionality and deliberate nature of every physical move I make. I have to sit and stand a certain way without using my arms, same for getting in and out of bed, picking things up, opening the refrigerator and once something hits the ground it’s gone til I go get the grabber. Of course then it hit me, Watchmen fans will appreciate this, but if you drop it, who grabs the grabber. So I bought a second one today, if I drop both I’ll just call it a day, sit down and watch a movie.

I’m a person who really can be identified as someone who thinks fast, talks fasts, and is almost constantly multitasking and operating, at least mentally, on multiple tracks at all times. Heart surgery has really forced me to slow down, not just physically, but mentally as well, and is forcing me to be more deliberate and intentional. It’s a requirement now, but I think in the long run it’s a good exercise for me. The fact is when I get myself into trouble its almost always from acting too quickly or without appropriate focus, hopefully this time will teach me to be better about that.

So my friends, take your time, be deliberate, be intentional about your life and you’ll have happier days, I promise. ~ Rev Kane

PS – God I love the Talking Heads!

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Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: 42 is the number

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Michael Kane

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ~ Douglas Adams

The number 42 finds constant and cosmic significance in my life. Why is this meaningful? Well, in Douglas Adams’ masterpiece of a book, The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the answer to meaning of life, the universe and everything. It’s just that we’ve forgotten the question. I love that concept more than I can explain and that’s the least weird thing in that book or the five that follow. Now is 42 actually significant? Who knows, like most numerology type things we put a lot of the meaning we want into the number, make it significant, notice it more often and then claim those occurrences as divine.

So let’s do a little bit of that tonight as I try and float through the hardest hours of my recovery days. You see I start out great, wake up, after varying levels of sleep, I knew this first week home would really suck on that front. And I do great up until about 5 PM and then I sunset like an Alzheimer’s patient. I typically end up napping for an hour, then I’m just groggy as shit, uncomfortable and incredibly restless until I finally give up and watch something and try to find ways to get comfortable and sleep. It’s a huge work in progress, lots of tweaking pillows and chair angles. If I get a three hour block in my camping chair I’m happy. Then I fumble around the apartment and try the couch. Last night for the first time I slept to my 8:30AM alarm. So I actually slept from 4:30 to 8:30 a new personal best since returning home. The added issue is that I usually wake up to an achy joint, a stiff muscle or joint from being in an odd position. Happily it’s been about comfort and not due to any real pain, I’m actually only taking Tylenol at this point and not even the maximum dosage.

It takes six to eight weeks for your sternum to heal after the surgery. So taking the midpoint is seven weeks, that’s right, 42 days. So that’s the countdown I’m on for my first major healing milestone. At seven weeks I absolutely will be healed enough, barring any complications, to be back to my normal sleeping routines. My initial plan was 1-2 weeks in the camping chair, then to the couch and hopefully week 4-5 back in my own bed. The good news is that I’m ahead of schedule, the bad news I’m not sure that holds up for my plans to return to my very comfortable bed.

So tonight I’m creating a little countdown of 42 days from my surgery date. So June 25th is my goal date to be back to semi-normal.

The really hard part in this is going to be patience. While I’m plenty busy everyday, the fact that I have to do everything deliberately and slowly, as well as my wonderful visits eat up the hours. The days are long and slow and I won’t overdue things or rush but seven weeks of patience will certainly be a test. May Douglas Adams’ ghost guide me.

I hope you’re having a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: A Lot of Love

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Michael Kane

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~ Lao Tzu

One of the huge upsides of this journey I’m on is a deeper connection with my community. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I even truly believed I had much of one before the procedure. Sure there were a few people I knew I could count on, my assistant at work, a close dean friend and a couple of others. But it’s difficult when in almost every interaction at work, it is with people who you supervise. While you can tell who the people are that are general colleagues and good work partners, as their supervisor it’s tough to know how far that truly extends if things get real.

As I’ve mentioned previously, to assist in my recovery, my wonderful assistant has been coordinating a group of volunteers, started as 8, then 12, the 15, 18 and now over 20. And these people have been beyond fabulous. They’ve come over for conversation, brought me more food than I can ever eat and even a lovely plant today. There have been many, many wonderful conversations, something I treasure.

So it’s been great, and the top image is from my 10 year old friend, the Tiny Dean, and really meant a lot to me.

So this is just kind of the first real re-start of my writing after surgery, more, really, a LOT more to come and thank you friends for the words, the comments of support, thoughts, prayers and vibes, it’s all incredibly appreciated. ~ Rev Kane

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Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: A Brief Update and Hello

Posted on May 12, 2025 by Michael Kane

Hello my friends,

I’ve come through the surgery relatively well.  Just some minor, but not unexpected snags. My blood pressure took its sweet time climbing back to normal.  My mobility has been great, but I’m still needing to reduce the amount of liquid in my body and get rid of these temporary cankles I’m sporting.  Then once cleared to leave the ICU, there were no open beds for a day.

The really great news is that 2 chest tubes, temporary pacemaker wires, and a neck IV port are all out, and all I have left is one IV port and some electrodes.

The first two days after surgery were brutal, no sleep, lots of pain and nausea, it was truly miserable.

The picture above is my first shower post procedure, I was very happy.  I’m sleeping better but super tired still.  I’m looking forward to getting home to familiar surroundings, likely on Tuesday.

I’ve been overwhelmed by how supportive people have been, visitors, etc….that’s been wonderful.

Have a happy day my friends – Rev Kane

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Alive and doing ok

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Michael Kane

Just wanted to provide an update. My chest tubes are out, pacer wires out.  Approved to move to the step down unit.

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Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: Surgery Day and Gratitude

Posted on May 7, 2025 by Michael Kane

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. ~ William Arthur Ward

Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: Surgery Day and Gratitude

Greetings! If you’re reading this around the time it posts I’m currently laying on an operating table in San Francisco, with my heart stopped while some really skilled people replace my aortic valve and repair two aneurysms one below and one above my heart. While I’m in this position I wanted to, via the miracle of technology, send out some gratitude to all of you.

I want to say thank you for fifteen years of the Ministry of Happiness. It was originally something I thought I would do maybe for a year and it has grown into so much more. I would have never thought that a simple little blog on happiness would end up being so personal, have several hundred subscribers and thousands of views every year. Your comments and communications of gratitude for the writing and the work have meant a lot to me.

And while it remains a remote chance, if things have gone south and this truly is a technological miracle of me speaking from beyond the grave, know that this blog, The Ministry of Happiness of The Church of Abnormal Acceptance has been my honor and my joy to write and I’ve been truly grateful for every one of you. Most importantly, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: Random Thoughts

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Michael Kane
hunter s thompson, fear and loathing, las vegas

You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye. ~ Hunter S Thompson

Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: Random Thoughts

This is an absolutely selfish post, you see the way I process things is by writing, it’s how I get the energy out and calm my brain down. I’m in the home stretch for my surgery so I’m running a little manic getting last minute things done. Today was a lot. I had to upload my will and other documents to the share site, I had three phone calls from people who wanted to check in before my surgery. I had to do some last minute shopping, check on my mail, pack a box I’m sending out to my littlest niece and nephews. Not to mention all of the standard stuff, laundry, my walk, working out etc… I had to set up the finishing touches on my apartment, move a table, set up my DVD player, pull CDs and DVDs to have them easily available. I had some last minute purchases to take care of including setting up some suction cup hooks in my bathroom.

Then I cleaned out my car, I’m picking up my sister and her friend from the airport tomorrow. I’m starting to pack and making sure I have the things I need ready, checking my medication changes and picked up a gift for my assistant who has been amazing in setting things up for my recovery. Tomorrow I still have a lot of things to do, I need to set up driving instructions for people who are going to be helping me out, including taking some pictures of the complex entrance and parking spots. I need to get some cash into the house so I can reimburse people for groceries and buy the stuff I want in my refrigerator for after I come back from the hospital. It’s a lot.

I think it’s a good thing surgery got delayed a couple of weeks, I never would have gotten everything done at work, or everything I needed to get done if it hadn’t been. In so many ways, this whole process and worked out really well. But honestly, I had hoped the two days before surgery would have been a couple of easy and relaxing days, so much for that idea, but I’ll have three months to catch up on sleep after Wednesday.

I’ve had a lot of conversations about my surgery, some of the conversations are great, some are taxing, all put my head in the space around the what ifs and as such I’ll be writing some notes tomorrow night to go out to people if things go wrong. But my chances are excellent that this all works out well and I’m keeping positive thoughts for the whole thing.

The HST quote that I used tonight seems to be on point, for my surgery I’ll be getting Ketamine, Fentanyl and Propofol as well as that heavy drug Tylenol. And there certainly will be people coming at me with razor sharp objects including scalpels and bone saws. All of this has been surreal enough that HST seems to be the right source for quotes.

Ok, hopefully burning all of that out will let me sleep tonight. This will likely be my last post before the surgery, I’ll likely have a time released post coming out the day of and hope to be back and writing at least something small to say I’m ok by the weekend.

Keep a good thought and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane

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Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: T-minus 7 Days

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Michael Kane

When the going gets weird, the weird go pro ~ Hunter S Thompson

Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: T-minus 7 Days

So we’re into the final countdown, a week from today at this moment, if all goes well, I’ll be coming down from being stoned off of my ass in ICU. Given that I’ll be getting a cocktail of fentanyl, ketamine and propofol I’m gonna be pretty out of it. I’ll also have an IV in my carotid artery, an IV in my arm, chest tubes, a catheter and a couple of pacemaker wires to juice my heart if it slows down too much. My transition to cyborg will be complete.

This week has been all about the pre-op preparation, appointments with nurses, lots of directions about drugs and such, picking up new prescriptions and final set ups in my apartment. It’s also my last week at work so of course I’m busy as hell, everyone, as expected, wants one last minute meeting. Well except for the faculty who think they are being sneaky and are already reaching out to the new dean to try and get decisions they don’t like changed. Of course, I’ve already anticipated that and fully read in my replacement about who they are, and what they’re going to try and do.

Had a nice surprise today, ended up on a text chain and in a chat with a bunch of my old fraternity brothers from the early 80’s. It’s always interesting chatting with folks you have known for forty years and who knew you in a really different phase of your life. They only knew me as an alcoholic and addict, someone who was always up for madness. Which in fact we found plenty of and some of those stories got retold today, it was fun.

While I expected people to be nice about the surgery, I have been truly surprised about how nice. At work, something that has been really nice is that the work I’ve put in for years in this job seems to have worked out. You never know how much impact you’ve actually had on people, or if they really appreciate what you’ve done. This week has been a bit of a revelation. There were people I expected to be nice, to give me a hug and wish me well. But the real surprise has been the other people, some I don’t even supervise who have shown up to wish me well and tell me how much they appreciate the work I do. I’ve also really surprisingly have been given a lot of small gifts. A few have been really nice and thoughtful including a copy of Monty Python’s The Search for the Holy Grail, which they appropriately said, will likely need to wait a few weeks to watch, because laughing will be painful for a time.

It’s been a nice surprise and at seven days this all seems more than a bit surreal, hence the HST quotes, because it’s Fear and Loathing in SF baby. ~ Rev Kane

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Three Questions, April 30, 2025

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Michael Kane

Buy the ticket, take the ride. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Three Questions, April 30, 2025

You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!

What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?

Forgot about some of my aquarium shots and looking over them today was the most beautiful thing I encountered.

What did I learn today?

Been reading some really fascinating articles on artificial photosynthesis that has some incredible promise.

What made me happy today?

Caught up with some really old friends today, guys from my old fraternity days. Reminiscing about some really crazy days from the early 80’s made me happy.

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