Home from the Hospital
Feb. 19th, 2025 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeIn summary: I went into the hospital on Friday with a severe abdominal hernia. They did emergency surgery and excised 10 cm of my small intestine, patching me up. I spent the last week recovering in the hospital: 2 nights in the ICU and 4 nights in the regular hospital. I have some hope to be able to write back-dated entries for the past week about what happened each day while I was laid out in the hospital, but will make no promises.
The medical professionals at Renown Health (Reno) decided that the last hurdle (white blood cell count) had been met today, and approved my discharge today. They disconnected the IV I've had for most of the past week, I was allowed to take a shower (showers are okay, but baths are not) for the first time in a week, and I changed back into my street clothes. Shortly after lunch, they brought a wheelchair and brought me down to the Discharge Lounge on the ground floor of the hospital where Lisa was waiting for me.
Around 2 PM or so, they were able to process me. The nurse removed the last infusion port and cut off my patient bracelet, gave me my post-discharge medications and instructions, and after I'd signed off, It was time to go home.
Lisa took us home, where we collected the accumulated mail from the post office and we bought a gallon of milk. (Lisa threw out all of the old milk.) Lisa made me chicken soup, which was delicious.
I am taking tomorrow off but will start working again on Friday. I let my co-workers know what's going on. I have a combination of what's called "protected safe sick leave" plus PTO. Because where was obviously no way to fix my time card from last week due to my not taking any computers with me, I just entered a week off for this week, with this coming Friday counting as last Friday and the total being all good.
Thank you to everyone who expressed concern about my condition. I was unable to directly post because I could not log into DW/LJ through my smartphone. (I guess I had the password wrong.) As it happens, I could reply by email to comments. Email and Mastodon were something I could often read and update. Facebook, DW/LJ, and other social media were not. Also, I did not have the chargers for my phone and was dependent upon the kindness of the hospital staff to charge those devices. When you are that sick, you are not so likely to grab chargers and computers. I came very close to needing an ambulance.
My thanks to Kuma Bear on DW and my other friends on social media to pass the word about what happened. I'm very grateful. But I'm also vastly buried in old messages and may not necessarily respond quickly.
No, I have no idea how much this will cost. I have good insurance (Anthem BC/BS) and a well-funded healthcare savings account, so I'm not expecting to be bankrupted by a week in the hospital. I expect that I will write about this in the future.
The medical professionals at Renown Health (Reno) decided that the last hurdle (white blood cell count) had been met today, and approved my discharge today. They disconnected the IV I've had for most of the past week, I was allowed to take a shower (showers are okay, but baths are not) for the first time in a week, and I changed back into my street clothes. Shortly after lunch, they brought a wheelchair and brought me down to the Discharge Lounge on the ground floor of the hospital where Lisa was waiting for me.
Around 2 PM or so, they were able to process me. The nurse removed the last infusion port and cut off my patient bracelet, gave me my post-discharge medications and instructions, and after I'd signed off, It was time to go home.
Lisa took us home, where we collected the accumulated mail from the post office and we bought a gallon of milk. (Lisa threw out all of the old milk.) Lisa made me chicken soup, which was delicious.
I am taking tomorrow off but will start working again on Friday. I let my co-workers know what's going on. I have a combination of what's called "protected safe sick leave" plus PTO. Because where was obviously no way to fix my time card from last week due to my not taking any computers with me, I just entered a week off for this week, with this coming Friday counting as last Friday and the total being all good.
Thank you to everyone who expressed concern about my condition. I was unable to directly post because I could not log into DW/LJ through my smartphone. (I guess I had the password wrong.) As it happens, I could reply by email to comments. Email and Mastodon were something I could often read and update. Facebook, DW/LJ, and other social media were not. Also, I did not have the chargers for my phone and was dependent upon the kindness of the hospital staff to charge those devices. When you are that sick, you are not so likely to grab chargers and computers. I came very close to needing an ambulance.
My thanks to Kuma Bear on DW and my other friends on social media to pass the word about what happened. I'm very grateful. But I'm also vastly buried in old messages and may not necessarily respond quickly.
No, I have no idea how much this will cost. I have good insurance (Anthem BC/BS) and a well-funded healthcare savings account, so I'm not expecting to be bankrupted by a week in the hospital. I expect that I will write about this in the future.
