After the ballgame, we drove downtown. Well, after the big traffic jams from all the Cubs-Sox traffic, we finally got downtown. What an incredible day - driving up Michigan Avenue, though slow-moving, was just your typical, wonderful, great, Chicago Experience. Apparently there were tons of other people that felt the same way judging by the number of peds everywhere.

We got to the hotel and went up to Barry's room, not knowing what to expect.

There was Barry, sitting in an office chair, looking like... Barry!

Holy crap did he look good! I didn't know what to expect, but there he was, in a shirt and sweat pants, watching TV, and other than the central-line connections flopping out of his neck, he was just... Barry! He didn't move around, much. I mean, here's a guy that had a liver transplant a few days ago, already out of the hospital, sitting in a hotel room watching golf!

The ONLY thing that was different - again, other than sticking to the chair and not moving around much - was that he was actually 30 pounds heavier than when he went into surgery (they pumped his body full of fluids during the 6 hour+ operation), so he's not "swollen" from the surgery itself, all of his tissues are full of fluid.

We talked for quite a while. We were kind of worried about his stamina, but this is how it went:

We stayed for dinner, ordering out from Ben Pao (using CEO Deliveries) and then stayed around and watched Batman Begins on HBO.

Stamina? Yeah, he's got it. He's great. It was almost... shocking. He said something that just kind of hit me from so many different angles.

Here it was Saturday - he had transplant surgery on Wednesday. We were talking about how a doctor came to talk to them about what was going to happen, minute by minute, through surgery and post-op. They prepared Barry and Buffy for what Barry was going to "look like" when he came out of surgery - bloated, tubes, the incision, etc. They just wanted to make sure B&B were prepared.

Anyway, Barry says "I got up to take a shower..." and that little phrase just hit me. Just days later, he's getting up out of bed to take a shower... so soon? Up and about? taking a shower?... (He went on to say that when he saw himself in the mirror, he thought he looked pretty damn good compared to what they said he could look like).

I believe that B&B said that there was only one other patient to leave the hospital this early after a transplant. We all believe that Barry is where he is because he never was "significantly" sick from his liver failure, which was just on a path to slow failure. He was in pretty good shape going in, and he's in great shape coming out.

This is just a great start to his recovery. He's got a way to go, but damn he's on the right path...