Surviving a long hospital stay

I don't know how most people survive a long hospital stay. I did meet a few other patients, and my primary insight is that they were perfectly happy to stay in bed all day and watch television. That, in fact, sickness gave them permission to do what they always wanted: deliquesce in front of the television set.

I couldn't do that. While I was in the hospital, I wrote a wrapper for the Whisper speech-to-text AI so it could transcribe and correctly annotate (the code was mostly for the latter) the audio from the tiny audio recorder I keep on a keychain; fixed a bug in the kernel config for video-for-Linux on the Surface Pro (and realized this skill made me a useful dinosaur), and a Bash script to do autocomplete for the Mame video game platform. I also kept up a steady stream of blogging, mostly about my hospital experience, but also other things.

I did watch a little TV. I tried to appreciate the new Netflix Lost in Space, but never could. I also watched the Korean SF The Silent Sea, which was better acted although the science was silly. I did turn on the TV now and then to watch even sillier things, but it was never my big attention. I read a little. I was on Twitter way too much.

Anyway, let me advise you on this: if you're going to be in the hospital for more than four or five days, make sure you bring whatever you need to keep your intellect alive: a laptop, Sudoku puzzles, a pen and paper, whatever it takes. Don't let yourself go.

My biggest mistake

My biggest mistake during this hospitalization was assuming that since I couldn't eat, I didn't need to brush my teeth. This was a huge error on my part. The first week, I was too addled to think clearly most of the time (although I did find two-hour blocks here and there where I was clear-headed enough to hack a Linux kernel config!), and the nighttimes were the worst, with pain, anxiety, and uncertainty driving me to ask for drugs to help me sleep.

After six days, I resumed brushing my teeth, but somehow still skipped a day here and there until I was fully clear. It was painful; the tubes going up my nose and down my throat pressed against the palate, the plate of cartilage and bone at the roof of the mouth that separates it from your nasal sinuses, plus the tubes themselves were in the way of my mouth. But I did eventually remember to do it reliably.

Don't be like me. Brush all the time. Plaque doesn't need food to build up; plaque uses your own saliva. The inside face of my lower teeth are now roughened with plaque to the point where I may have to call my dentist for an early cleaning.

So, yeah, if you're gonna be in the hospital for more than four or five days, bring your own toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo & soap. And brush your damn teeth every day.