Hello. At home and still alive.
I say it that way because there was a small fuck-up yesterday evening that absolutely traumatized me and probably Ellie as well.
The thing about being in the hospital is there’s a whole system in place to keep you on schedule and platoons of people making sure you take your drugs and do your things and monitor your results and the entire environment is built to make it easy to get in and out of bed and take a shit and just generally be a wounded human being trying to get well.
A whole morning of great news and getting booted out to the street with a bag of drugs and a smile led to me taking my eye off the ball for a bit and then getting distracted by just how low and deep the couch is and next thing I know I haven’t eaten properly and all the painkillers have worn off and my BP is like 160/110 and I am shaking with pain and I am rushing to catch up and get back to a place where I am not actively wishing I was in a coma.
I will spare all the details but the part that got me into a life-changing place is too stupid not to describe.
I decided angel hair pasta was too hard to chew and my stomach was pissed off at me so I chose to have a banana to act as a buffer for the massive hit of tylenol that was gonna land directly.
I was so distracted by pain that I didn’t concentrate and eat it slowly, but more or less inhaled it in a way that would be banned in american theaters if filmed.
You’re probably thinking something like “what an idiot, he probably got nauseated or threw up or bad stomach cramps” but no, as horrific as that would have been, this was worse.
After eating and going upstairs to the bedroom to try and lay down (just getting into bed was a whole ordeal) I realized that I had a little banana-ish tickle in the back of my throat. It kept making me want to cough or clear my throat, and every time I did, my shredded abdominal muscles screamed with pain, and so did I, which made it worse. The cycle ramped up and up and up until I was coughing and crying and whimpering and basically nearly out of my mind with pain.
I have no idea how long it lasted, it could have been 15 minutes but it felt like hours. It was the worst pain I have ever experienced and I hope my brain forgets all about it. I hope I didn’t panic Ellie too badly. I know she was really concerned trying to help while there was really nothing she could do.
Eventually the drugs kicked in and I passed out for a bit and when I woke up we worked out a system to stay on schedule.
So anyway it was a rough evening and a decent night’s sleep where I only woke up once to sprinkle a little opiod (ugh) on my nervous system and this morning I am back on my bullshit.
Woke up at 5:30 like the new usual, wandered around the dark apartment, sipped an Ensure, made some jokes. At one point between my slow shuffles and standing and sitting “exercises” I laid in bed and found a position where I was pain free for the first time in a week. That was cool. Problem is if I stay like that I will not heal well and probably learn the hard way about thrombosis, and so I am up again, occasionally yelping when I move wrong or burp, and wandering the apartment showing my belly scar it’s new home.
Happy Monday!