After all the talk of corking, there was no cork. I wore tape all day, gradually re-learning to breathe through my nose and mouth without the help of an extra airway (I was allowed to remove the tape if I couldn’t get enough air). As I mentioned last night, the difficulty is not breathing in but exhalation, probably because there’s a giant tube in my trachea that’s now blocked. Struggling to exhale is a strange sensation, though. Like the inverse of drowning. It got easier as the day went along, and prompted by a resident who said i should do more to push myself, I was close (though not quite) to full speed in the halls and late in the day on the stairs. My next test, which begins now, is to make it through the night with the tape. We shall see what morning brings.