Good morning Hank. It's Tuesday. Let me take this gauze out of my mouth. Oh God. I just had a pretty invasive oral surgery down here Hank. Uh... This is definitely the highest I've ever been when making a vlogbrothers video. My mouth hurts so bad.

Hank, do you know the first time that I reference this pain that I still have was in my second vlogbrothers video in 2007.

Hank as you know, I had surgery on my mouth a few weeks ago. After they sewed my gum back into my mouth, my mouth tasted like cement and blood and burnt meat.

This is the 4th and most dramatic surgery that I've had and I gotta say that I have great care. I have a great oral surgeon. Great dentist. So I really am confident that this is finally going to work. But ugh chronic pain is just the worst. The thing about physical pain Hank, is that it's almost inexpressible. Like, uh, there's this great book, "The Body in Pain" by Elaine Scary, that talks about how like, pain doesn't just defy language, it kind of destroys language. 

Like it's just impossible to use language to get other people to understand what your physical pain is like because your physical pain is always only yours. 

But anyway, Hank, this particular surgery was necessitated because a metal rod had emerged from out of my gum, erupting from the skin and pressing against my lip. That's the best that I can do to use language to describe how much it hurt. 

Hank I'm sorry this video isn't funnier. Oh, is that- oh it's dried blood. That's nice. That's a nice look for today. 

But anyway Hank, in the last twenty four hours I've been thinking a lot about how lucky I am. Like I have access to the best oral surgeons and the best dentists, so you know this suffering is just necessary. 

But there's a lot of suffering that's completely unnecessary and my favorite thing about the Nerdfighter community is that we try to do stuff about that. So anyway thinking about that let me just start a fundraiser over at Save the Children to help them out with their work with Syrian refugees. 

Save the Children is doing amazing work to get kids in refugee camps access to healthcare and education and nutrition. So yeah I started a fundraiser called Nerdfighters Opposed to Human Suffering Including but not Limited to John's Post-Operative Pain, which a Nerdfighter on Tumblr helpfully shortened to NOHSIbnLtJPOP, or as I like to call it "No Sea Bin Lieutenant J-Pop." Nerdfighters I will match all your donations up to $20,000 and I'm not just saying that because I'm high, I asked Sarah earlier if it was O.K. and she said yes. 

Hank the only thing I can really say about pain is that it sucks. I don't think that it's romantic or transcendent or any of that. I think it just sucks. And I think where we can help alleviate it, we should. 

So donate if you can. If not to this fundraiser then to another. And of course it's O.K. if you can't donate as well. You've gotta take care of yourself. Alice needs me to read her an Elmo story so I gotta go, Hank. I'll see you on Friday.