I had a bunch of ebooks ready to read in the hospital but found that magazines were better--I found it hard to concentrate on more than one sentence at a time for the first few days due to anesthesia effects and pain. I also had the foresight to load my ipod with funny podcasts which were a god-send...

I also think it is best to know as much as possible about your procedures and results. I was just diagnosed with an adenocarcinoma in my cecum following a right hemicolectomy to remove a 2.5 cm polyp found on routine colonoscopy. I had a copy of the pathology report (and I'm a sonographer who deals ...