Surgery--or any kind of hospitalization, really--is an isolating event. You're taken away from the people you love, drugged and cut open. After that you spend days watching TV, giving blood at 1 a.m., and drifting in-and-out of consciousness. The pain was the worst thing about surgery; waking up with a colostomy bag was the second. The loneliness could have ranked right up there with those bits of unpleasantness.

But it didn't, quite. Because I kept posting, three and four times a day, to both Facebook and Twitter--and, thank God, folks kept posting right back at me.

Just a few hours after my surgery, in fact, President Obama took the airwaves to announce the death of Osama bin Laden. Slightly more alert this time--and leaving the TV on around-the-clock to reduce my sense of dislocation--I posted this at 12:40 a.m.:

"News flash: Osama bin Laden was hiding in my gut."

Probably not that funny, in retrospect. But I'd already realized that I'd probably be giving folks regular updates on my recovery, and I didn't want to scare people away with a steady diet of grimness and self-pity.