The Kid’s Back Home

I talked to Eamon — let’s see: Monday night Berkeley time; Tuesday afternoon in Tokyo. He was back home from the hospital and sounding great; it was such a relief to hear his voice. He told me all about what it’s like to have a collapsed lung (he thought he was having a heart attack). When he saw his chest X-ray at the hospital, his right lung was big and expanded and normal. On the other side was something that he said looked “like a spike.” It was his left lung, which the doctors said had collapsed to something like one-quarter its usual size.

So, after the surgery and the fever and the convalescence (and dealing with hospital personnel who thought, incorrectly, that he didn’t know what they were saying when they spoke Japanese) and the lack of a bedside telephone, for heaven’s sake, he’s back in his now very-comfortable-seeming apartment in Sato, just outside Tokyo.

Like I said: I am relieved.