I have a surprise for you!

I had plenty of time to think about my second surgery before it went down. I wasn't really worried about anything specific. I just didn't like the idea of being cut up and drilled with tubes down my throat to make me breathe while I'm heavily sedated. We didn't have anything to distract us, like pain medication or a floppy foot dangling from my leg.

But just as I was rolling into the pre-op room in the hospital with Brooke, a few hours from going under the knife and changing into my sweet gown, she gets a text from one of our friends.

"Your email has been hacked."

Immediately, every thought about the surgery went out the window. All of those hours of worrying anxiously about ankle reconstruction disappeared. Here I am, a computer scientist, and my wife might have a virus. She uses an Apple MacBook!

Right then, a nurse comes into the room to measure my vitals. This measurement includes my blood pressure. Needless to say, it was high. Not because I was in pain. Not because I was nervous. I was worried that all of our money was gone.

Just after I got out of surgery, Brooke found an Internet connection and changed her email password. She had about a million emails from people telling her she had a problem.

When we got home two days later, I did some investigating. Well, I call it investigating. But given the massive amounts of pain pills I'm taking, maybe others wouldn't call it that. We also changed just about every online account password we know.

Someone on March 1st had logged into her email account and sent the following spam message to almost everyone in her contact list (I didn't get one):

Subject: I have a surprise for you

Dear friends,
How are you ?I am pleasant to tell you that I just found a good online
store engage in famous brand handbags.They are all in top
quality,affordable price,and elegant appearance.I think they are
wonderful articles,maybe you will have the same thoughts after you go
:www.sell-brand-bag.com
May you have a happy shopping journey there~!

Do not click on that link unless you know what you're doing. The domain name registrar is a company in China called Xin Net Technology Corporation. Apparently, they're known for spam.

The IP address of the person that logged into her account on March 1st is 115.49.95.216. The host is still up. A traceroute to the IP address stops working after about 16 hops. But the last hop to report back is pc86.zz.ha.cn. The hop just before that is hn.kd.smx.adsl. There's this pretty awesome website that reports on "offensive" IP addresses. Here's one for hn.kd.smx.adsl.

The website from the spam email is pretty ridiculous. They're posing as a store front to steal credit card information. Most updated browsers will immediately report to the user that it is a fraudulent website.

Freaking China.

We're not absolutely sure how Brooke's email account was hijacked. I haven't had a chance yet to look at her MacBook, but I don't think she has a virus. I suspect that the applications she uses for school might be the problem, i.e. Blackboard. One of them had her log into her email without using encryption.

I was going to check OpenDNS.org for any odd queries made while we were away, but I forgot that I keep my wireless network open for anyone to use. There were some ridiculous queries in there that have made me reconsider keeping it open.

Right now, I think only her email account was compromised. And as I get off of the pain medications, I'll continue to take a look at this. To my computer scientist friends, please feel free to investigate on your own. If you need any other info, just let me know.

Surgery Two: Dominated

Here I am in the pre-op room, resting in my fancy gown. This thing had a state-of-the-art, built-in central heating system to keep my body warm while I was under anesthesia. It was also purple.

I had not received any medications at this point.

Surgery two was very different from the first one 19 days ago. There was no time to think before the first surgery. I had the accident at 10AM and was under the knife by 2PM. In between those two points in time I had been subjected to numerous pain medications.

I went into the second surgery with plenty of time to think about it. We were a little more anxious as a result. Even though my tibia was destroyed, I thought I'd handle the pain much better this time around than I did in the first surgery.

As you can tell from this post-op picture, my prediction was inaccurate.

Originally I was scheduled to stay at the hospital for 23 hours. It wound up being twice that. Why? My surgeon beat me up.

The surgery was about 3 hours long. Dr. Buchanan had to make a much larger incision on the top of my ankle than originally planned. He removed approximately 20% of the tibia bone fragments. The large pieces were rotated 180 degrees around before they were secured to my second internal fixator. I was given bone graft to help replace the material removed during surgery. Apparently my soft tissue damage is minimal, so I might luck out with little to no tendon problems.

I also learned more about what happened during my accident. When I hit the tree, my right foot was bent backwards, toes toward shin. This force broke my fibula and crushed my tibia. It also stretched and severely bruised a nerve that runs along the backside of my ankle. This is the reason I have no feeling in the soul of my foot and first two toes. But since the nerve was not cut or pinched, I stand a chance of regaining some of that feeling.

Finally, I got to keep my external fixator! After a closer look, the bars are not made of titanium. They're probably some kind of carbon composite.

I thoroughly enjoyed having this metal bar threaded through the inside of my right heel bone.

These screws are wicked. They have a very sharp drill bit built into the tips. Look how far down this went into my shin!

Not sure what my plan is with the external fixator. Any ideas?

I'm scheduled to be discharged this morning! My pain seems to be under control now. We spoke with The Closer earlier. Around 20 percent of my tibia at the joint was removed. Bone graft was thrown in to help grow some of it back.

One more night at the hospital. Pain got a little out of control.

I'm still at the hospital. Pain management has been an issue but we're hoping I can check out tonight.

Surgery two has been successfully dominated. I got to keep the external fixator. It is frightening to look at.

Go Time!

I'm a few hours away from going under the knife. I'm ready to dominate my second surgery. Thanks to everyone for your support, thoughts and prayers.