Day 141 Catching Up

As I've often done, I am going to beg forgiveness for any typos I don't manage to catch. I had a five day stay at the University Hospital and in the process, my eyes have gotten bad. I'm thinking I'm due for some more injections as I've had in the past.

The trip to University started because I couldn't keep down an antibiotic  called bactrim.  At the beginning of last month I  developed an open sore on the top of my big toe that tested positive for a nasty bacteria.  The wound occurred because the edge of the cast on my right foot rubbed the spot until it was open and susceptible for an infection.


The bactrim made me sick to my stomach, stole my appetite, and just generally made me feel bad.  I stopped eating, and was barely keeping low calorie Gatorade down.  I got dehydrated and a bit loopy. I slept. A lot.

My daughter called and convinced me to head to the ER. My potassium was high, and the potassium in the Gatorade didn't help matters.  They hooked me up to a pair of IVs and started flooding me with saline and IV antibiotics.

I had dizzy spells and periods of light-headedness. I was admitted to a room about eight hours after I arrived.

Don't go to the ER on a Monday if you can at all help it.  This ER has 95 rooms and they were triaging us and then sending us to a secondary waiting room where they began blood testing, inserting the IVs, and taking X-rays. All the ER beds were full and the ER was overflowing!

I ended up in a bona fide trauma bay.  The room was at least twice the size of the "regular" bays. The bed was at an angle and there were all sorts of machines and IV hooks and posters.

 Above the doorway was an alphabetic reminder to the trauma teams of what they needed to do. A=access, B=Breathing, C=Circulation, D=Disability, all the way through I. On one wall was the procedure for massive blood transfusions.  I mean this bay, this was the real deal - the type of place they'd take gunshot victims.

In my addled state I was doing what I could to remember the things I was seeing in that room.  It was unlike any emergency room I'd ever been in before.

I was transported to my room about 3:00 am on Tuesday morning.  I snagged a couple hours of sleep and then the various nurses, phlebotomists and doctors began making their rounds. Since this is a teaching hospital, I got a whole team. The lead doctor  had one of the interns assigned to me, who questioned me about various things and then a few hours later had to answer the head docs questions.  She reminded me of House, only nice and without the drug addiction.

This was the pattern for four days, until my release.  After four liters of saline solution, it was time to get that water out of my body.  They had me use a diuretic which definitely did the trick, but they ended up thinking it did the trick a little too well.  The end result of all that monkeying around with fluid levels was a slight pulmonary edema which they didn't manage to get rid of until Thursday.  I stayed on the IV antibiotics until then as well.

They had me on two different, powerful drugs meant to take care of the infection, that, every doctor said, "That's XXXX? It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before."  Their shock, awe, and general disbelief make me wonder if I had it at all. I guess better safe than sorry though.

Once the fluid situation cleared, I was still light-headed.  There is a good chance this is because my blood pressure was unusually low.  Normally, I'm a little higher than 100/66 which seemed to be a frequent reading.  Once it got back into my more normal range the dizziness dissipated.  My release was set for Friday, just past noon.

This hospital stay was quite an experience.  I learned a few things, got confused by a few others and generally have a bit to share with the survey that I'll get in the mail in the next week or so.

My biggest take-away is that I have to learn how to recognize the signs that I'm getting dehydrated.  I just generally start feeling so poorly that I'm not thinking water, I'm thinking muscles and aches and pains. I am hoping to pick up a few strategies in that regard.

There is some sort of average regarding the number of days that you are hospitalized and the number of weeks it takes to recover fully.  I think one day is equal to a week, but I really need to get corroboration on that count.

Anyway, summer is on the way out (hard to believe); people are back-to-school shopping, and in some cases school starts back up in a week or two.  The temperature is already cooler at night, and we are going to drop into the 70's for our high later this week.  My mom always said the weather changed when school started. That seems to be the case even though school now starts nearly a month earlier than it did when I was in elementary school.

I have a job interview tomorrow at a school, and I'm hoping the wages are decent. However, if it is a daycare situation, as I'm concerned it might be, I'll be lucky if they offer just over minimum, which would really be too bad since this place is just up the road from me. 

Guess we'll see on that one too. No use looking a gift horse in the mouth, or borrowing trouble before it arrives, and any one of a hundred wise idioms that would fit the situation. I'll just go to the interview and see what I see.