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5 and a half years ago I was in a hospital bed recovering from gastric sleeve surgery. When I talk to people about this experience I get the same questions: **Question One** “Which one is that? Is that the band?” No. The surgery I had was the one where they poke five holes into your abdominal cavity and remove at least 70% of your stomach, leaving behind only a “sleeve.” **Question Two** “How long did it take?” The answer to this innocent question is actually not as straightforward as it sounds. The best answer I can offer is that “it depends on what you count as the start and as the finish...” There are just too many parts. The procedure itself? About 90 minutes. Then recovery in hospital took about 2 extra days. You know that Salvador Dali painting called ‘Sleep’? With the deformed humanoid head held up by flimsy stilts amongst a psychedelic desert? That’s what it felt like for two days. In suspended animation within my own body. Just precariously floating. Until I got the hiccoughs that is. Oh my god, the hiccoughs. I have never, in my life, experienced a pain like it. I can still feel my cut up stomach convulsing against the sutures. If there was ever a moment I had thought to myself “what have I done?”… it was then. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/this-is-sparta/message