Seeing as how I've let my little corner of the interwebs fall behind over the past year or so I'm back at it again. Oh my, aren't you excited?! The impetus behind restarting this whole project comes from the fact that yes my friends, I found myself under hospital care for an extended period again. This time for a whopping 30 days in the loving arms of those fine folks at Wentworth-Douglas. In my usual fashion I'll go over some of the finer points here:
(before I get into too much gory detail I'd like to point out that this morning, Saturday March 2nd, 2012 at 8:17 is the first time I've actually listened to any music, at all, in the past month. I already feel better about my life. Also, it happened to come on to the Punk Vs. Classic Rock record that reminds me of work, and more importantly, His Dark Lord Clarcula, because of all the things I play at work this is probably his favorite record because he actually knows the songs. Oh, Clarke...)
More on my love of my restaurant and my coworkers later. On to the sick bits!
January 29th I was having a rough time. I had spent a good portion of the night profusely vomiting blood, passing out, and generally being in not a good state. I did what any forward-thinking lad in my position would do and called my doctor's after-hours care line and said something along the lines of
"So, I'm fairly certain I know what you're going to tell me but this is what's going on and I'm pretty sure I need to go to the hospital right now."
"Sir, yes, call 911 immediately and go to the emergency room."
"K, toodles."
(Alright, I made up the toodles part.)
This being the first time I'd ever called 911 I was a bit excited and scared at the same time. I mean c'mon, it's 91freaking1. How often do you get to dial those magical three numbers in your lifetime? Hopefully never, really. But the dispatcher was very nice and helpful and the EMT's came promptly though I was embarrassed that they had to see my house in a state of utter disarray. Hey, even though technically I was close to dying I still have a little bit of pride.
(I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I half-hoped to see Kelley come through that door because she passed her NH EMT classes in December and thought that would be delicious irony if she got the call. Ah well.)
The fine gentlemen did their EMT thing, strapped me down, got me all ambulance-d and away I went up the street to the infamous W-D ER.
Apparently throwing up blood, and lots of it, isn't a good thing. Fun fact: humans need blood to live. They took my H&H (blood count) and I had basically a quarter of the blood in my system that I should have. Not good at all. Transfusion time!
I've had transfusions in the past but it was always FFP (Fresh Frozen Plasma) and not actual blood. I felt kind of like a vampire. They promptly moved me to CCU (Critical Care Unit, aka ICU/SICU) where I got the first of many blood transfusions. Hung out there with some nurses I recognized (It's sad when whatever floor I end up on I recognize people in that hospital) for a week? or so and was moved to a gen-pop floor.
Oh, almost forgot, I had splenetic thrombosis and had to have my spleen removed, the process of which made it necessary to remove a portion of my stomach, left kidney, and colon. My poor friggin' colon has had the worst luck. Hell, the rest of my insides too. So kids, running tally:
Pancreas: gone
Spleen: gone
Appendix: gone (not that you really need that anyway)
Kidney, left side: slightly compromised
Large intestine: Down about five feet and counting
On the plus side there really isn't much more they can take out of me at this point. It's all kind of essential now. Although, I have heard of kind of a new procedure where they can get your liver to perform some pancreatic function which is kind of exciting. One of my father's friends also has pancreatitis and she's a candidate for this operation. More power to her, I say. Let's all get back to relative normalcy, eh?
In the time it took to write that paragraph I heard Five Iron Frenzy, Incubus, and now Relient K. Today is indeed a good day.
Aaaand Eddie Money. Eff yes.
So yeah, more surgery, transfusions, and some of the most excellent nursing care I've had thus far. They gave me the option before my operation to do it there or transfer down to Lahey, given my history there. I said absolutely not, I want to stay in Dover. Why, you ask when I have such a successful track record of surgery at Lahey?
For starters I live less then a mile or so from W-D. Lahey is something like 60 miles away, give or take. Two, I needed this surgery done to save my life so I just wanted it done. Three, and this was the most important, I trusted my new surgeon, Dr. Auty and this isn't exactly a state secret but I prefer the nursing care at W-D over Lahey. Don't get me wrong, Lahey is a fine hospital and I highly recommend them, especially for emergent care, but I seem to have better luck with my care at W-D. It was a no-brainer.
Seven and a half hours of surgery later, crisis averted. Now children, if you don't know this, your spleen is sort of important. It deals with your white blood cells, platelets, infections, general body upkeep, etc. Now I'm spleen-less. What does that mean? Well, if my platelets get crazy out of control (which they did) I have a very strong chance of getting blood clots just about everywhere so I get lovely shots and meds to thin my blood out so that doesn't happen.
Blood clots are a bad idea.
Ah, a life of medication basically forever. Sweeeeet. Ah well, I'm still alive.
That's kind of the kicker here and what keeps me going: (not to be all sappy/sentimental/sad bastard)
I'm still alive.
Take that, universe.
Alright, that's enough for now. I'm going to get my mental mosh on with some FYS and get ready to flush my tubes, take my blood sugar, y'know, the fun stuff.
Hopefully I'll be keeping up with this blogthing a bit more than I have lately. I know at least eight people enjoy reading my little pearls of non-wisdom.
Take care, kiddos.
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