I've been released on my own recognizance!

Gaunt

Well, I'm home. After 23 days on a stomach pump plus a feeding tube, which the nurses say was both too much and too long, I am finally free of all life-support equipment. That's not to say I'm in "great" shape, just that I'm no longer requiring mechanical intervention to help me stay alive.

And it was indeed staying alive that was the issue. My upper intestine was obstructed, I couldn't process food at all. I was like that for three days before I was properly diagnosed; the first ER mis-diagnosed my problem as "pancreatitis" and sent me home with the entirely wrong set of medications.

For the last three days, we saw successively more improvement in my condition. My feeding tube, which had already been clogged once by a nurse making a mistake, had clogged again by no nurse being available to reset the feeding tube after it had run out of drip to give me, and by the machine having no water left in it with which to flush the tube. I can't really blame the nurses, though; according to one there is supposed to be one nurse for every four patients on the floor, but instead there is one for every six, because they're short-handed and desperately low on resources. Healthcare staff shortages are everywhere, and they're only going to get worse as our economy contracts and COVID continues to ravage our healthcare workers.

I was also told by my doctors, "Despite all this gear, you're the healthiest patient on my floor." By that he meant that I was still strong, still capable, and still fighting. I was also one of the most intensely active in my own healthcare, and I think that made some of the nurses think it was okay to leave me on my own. Not in this case, though.

So while the larger tube for the stomach pump was out, the smaller tube stayed in, despite being clogged and useless. They were waiting to see if I relapsed, as in the past week I had had a "good" day of 500ml followed by a "bad" day of 1200. But no, the numbers kept going, I kept eating, and soon I was back on real food, even if only fluids: cream of wheat, milk, coffee, cranberry juice, yogurt. That sort of thing.

Thursday morning, my surgeon came in and said he would schedule to have the tube removed. "You just yanked the other one, why not this one?" I asked.

"You didn't like me much when I did it last time."

"It was uncomfortable, but I don't blame you for that. Besides, this is the smaller tube. Let's just yank it now." So he did, and I was right, it was smaller and therefore not nearly as uncomfortable. Besides, I'd already been through removing that one, the feeder tube, twice already, so I knew what to expect. It was over before within seconds.

He said, "We'll see how you do today, and if all goes well, I'll either come by tonight or tomorrow and we'll discharge you."

I can't tell you how much that meant to me. I had a lunch that was mostly yogurt and beef broth, but that was enough to convince him that by 3pm it was time to get my discharge paperwork done.

It took two hours, mostly because there were errors on the medication chart that I needed corrected. I'm not taking any new medications at all; in fact, they want me to stop taking antacids, since my body is processing digestive fluids just as readily as any other liquid. Eventually, though, I was allowed to dress in what I'd arrived: pyjama bottoms, sneakers, and a Henley top (I was into Henleys long before Ryan Reynolds repopularized them!). My backpack was stuffed with my intellectual life supports: laptop, e-reader, phone, game pad, headphones, and all the chargers for all of the above. A surprising number of nurses were on-hand to wish me well, saying they'd miss me but understood if I didn't want to ever come back. One nurse walked me down to the front door (it would be awkward if I slipped, fell and injured myself on the way out, right?) and then I was given a Lyft and driven home.

Lunch: Water, Coffee, Calorie & Protein Bomb

Omaha and I immediately drove back out for supplies: broths, fluids, anything I could digest, plus two medications I take regularly because I'm an Old™. The dietician recommended a old-persons' protein drink, but I went with something called "Serious Mass" protein powder, which I have to drink one scoop of twice a day, with 12oz of milk, 8oz of full-fat plain yogurt, and a cup of fruit, all mixed up in a blender. And even that, twice a day, is still just half the calories, protein and carbs I need to run and heal this body of mine. It's hard to get 2500kCal into you when you can't eat real meat.

And with that, I finally took a shower and shaved. I put my wedding ring back on. I feel human again. I'm still on the liquid diet for two weeks, then I meet with the surgery team again (via telemedicine this time) and we decide how to move forward with solid food. I've contact my GP and asked him for a consult so I can get off short-term disability and get back to work; I'm really worried about where my code has gone in the seven weeks I've been away. I was able to view it in the third week, but it's been four weeks since that, so who knows where it's gone or what they've done with it?

Cognitively, I'm all there, or mostly. I have my regular medicines again, and that seems to be working just fine. I just don't want to get too bored.

Surviving a long stay, plus the biggest mistake I made while hospitalized

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.