Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

In 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.

For the past several days, I have had increasing pain above my left cheek, in the sinus area. Neither aspirin nor ibuprofen made much of an impact upon it. I elected to go to the Fernley Urgent Care clinic, which opens at 9 AM on Sunday. If I had been smart, I would have headed over there to be there when they opened, or at least put in for an 11 AM appointment, which was the earliest available when I checked at 8:30. I was not smart, and by 9:15, the earliest appointment was 2 PM. I made the appointment and did other things.

Renown Health's system texts you with updates showing where you stand in line, so I knew that the earliest they expected to get to me was about 2:10 PM. By the time I checked in, the delay had grown, as I expected it would be. Eventually I got in shortly after 2:30 PM.

The doctor agreed with my own assessment that the runny nose I get from the Ozempic led to an opportunistic infection getting into my head. He looked up my nose and told me it was dry and inflamed. While there's no way to know without running tests (which would take enough time that by the time they knew, it would probably not matter that much) whether it's viral or bacteriological. So he prescribed antibiotics and told me to get an over-the-counter saline spray to moisten the nasal passages. What I did this morning (breath steam in a hot shower) was good, too.

After the appointment, I walked over to Walgreens and they told me that it would be at least another hour before my prescription came up, so I drove home, and by and by they texted me to tell me that the prescription was ready. I went and collected it. Also, Pizza Hut was running a buy one large pizza, get another one for free, so I got two pizzas and brought them home, giving one to Lisa and packing half of the one I kept away for lunch tomorrow.

As usual, of course, I know to take the full course of antibiotics even if I start feeling better. Me No Fool when it comes to antibiotics. I don't want to breed superbugs.

Today's plan was to drive to Roseville, where I could get lab test draws done for my annual medical checkup that will be in a couple of weeks. Sutter Health has no labs in Reno, so Roseville is the nearest lab to which I can get on a Saturday, but the lab does close at Noon. We figured that would not be a problem, though, as we planned to leave at 6:30 AM.

( The Astro Had Other Plans )

Dealing with the spare cost us an hour, but that was okay, because Big O Tires where we'd get the warranty repair opened at 7:30. We drove to Sparks, and they repaired the tire fairly quickly. Because the spare is a full size tire, not a mini-spare, we just put the repaired tire in the back of the fan and set off for Roseville later than planned. Fortunately, we still had an hour or so to spare, and we got to the lab just before 11 AM.

To my surprise, I only had to wait a few minutes before they brought me in, took the blood and urine samples, and sent me on my way. Lisa was also surprised that we were at the lab less than 30 minutes.

Neither of us had eaten since last night, and I proposed that we go to a restaurant at which I've stopped a few times but at which Lisa had never eaten. We headed east for Emigrant Gap.

( The Rustic Table )

Aside from getting stuck in road work for a while on I-80 (I jumped off at Kingvale and took old US-40 around part of the slowdown) and taking a brief rest stop on the edge of Reno, we made decent time heading home, arriving back in Fernley around 4:15 PM, before sundown.

Tomorrow we will swap the repaired tire back onto the van and put the spare away, then work on some other chores. Aside from the annoyance with the tire, it was a nice enough trip, with good traveling weather.

A couple of days ago, Lisa noticed that I had a bruise on my eyelid.

( Darn Spot )

It doesn't hurt, and it's starting to fade, but it's mystifying. I do not recall hitting myself in the eye with anything.

I thought what was bugging me a few days ago was a mild cold, but I've continued to have head congestion. No fever or anything else, and I continue to test negative for COVID, but maybe it's a sinus infection. It's also getting very windy outside, so there's no incentive to go outside. I was supposed to edit RLMS video today, but my head it so thick that I just do not feel able to concentrate for that long. Maybe I'll just take advantage of that extra hour and go back to bed.

I appear to have caught a cold. Not COVID — I tested negative this morning. Despite my ongoing precautions, I have something causing sniffling, sneezing, and body aches, with no fever.

I had a dentist appointment this afternoon, and while they said that if I didn't have a fever or more severe symptoms, it would be okay to come in for the checkup, I did not feel comfortable potentially passing a cold on to them and their other patients.

Lisa did make up some chicken soup two nights ago, so I will have the remaining leftover soup for lunch, which may help somewhat.

Aside from some challenges connecting to my employer's computer network (and spending time on the phone with tech support because of it), today was pretty quiet, and that's good because I'm still tired from the drive back from the Bay Area. Those trips get harder the older that I get.

My leg still hurts from what I think is a pinched nerve that I picked up in Winnipeg, or possibly during the train trip from there to Churchill. I have contacted a chiropractor who has worked on me before. I hope they can see me this week. Meanwhile, my days have consisted of sleeping as much as I can. I'm happy that we took that trip, but it took a lot out of me.

I "slept in" for an hour later than my usual weekday alarm, but I did have to be up before 6 AM because I had to take the second dose of the sodium sulfate goop. I dutifully drank it and the required two additional full (16 oz) glasses of water. Combined with what I took last night, not too long thereafter the medication started taking effect. Not to give too much medical information, but it wasn't pretty and it wasn't fun. If you've ever had a colonoscopy, you probably know what I mean. It's just as well that I was in a hotel room, as I was even closer to the bathroom than I am at home, and I lost track of the number of trips I had to make. However, the medication did what it was supposed to do.

I drank more water because that goop tastes awful, but, per instructions, I had to stop drinking anything by 8 AM, four hours before I was to report to the hospital. Fortunately for me, the effects ended (and it appeared it had done its work) by about 10 AM, giving me time to have a shower and get ready to be tested.

Lisa drove me over to the medical center. While it's only about 800 m from the hotel, traffic conditions meant it took us around twenty minutes to get there. We went to the colonoscopy center and checked in. I filled out the form explaining that Lisa would be the one to collect me. I had to bring Lisa with me to prove that someone really would get me and that I wasn't going to try to drive myself back. I gave the telephone number of the hotel and our room number. They assumed it was a cell phone and wanted to test it. I explained that it was our hotel. The said when they expected to call her, and she was then free to go back to the hotel.

I filled out more papers, and after a few minutes, they called me in and took me to the patient prep room and asked me questions. I changed out of my clothes and into the surgical gown. Various staff members came and prepped me in different ways, including installing a line in my hand through which the sedative would be injected. Eventually, they rolled me into the examination room. I don't even remember the sedative being injected, but I was already feeling sleepy before they did so, and I was out like a light. The next thing I knew, I was in a recovery room and I could get dressed.

Eight years ago, they found one polyp, and told me to come back in about five years. I was planning to do so, and then the pandemic hit. The doctor told me that the current guidelines are actually 7-8 years, and told me not to beat myself up.

I buried the lede here, and it's good news: there were no polyps and nothing else of concern. They told me to come back in ten years. That's a big relief.

While I was much more alert than I recall from my previous colonoscopy, I was still not terribly steady on my feet. They eased me into a wheelchair and took me out to the van, where Lisa was waiting to take us "home" to the hotel.

Our initial plan had been to order out for pizza. However, it turns out that there are no Pizza Huts within delivery range of our hotel. Lisa has to be careful about what she gets due to some food allergies. (Round Table Pizza, for example, makes her sick.) Therefore, she sticks with pizza brands that have worked for her in the past. After I rested for about an hour so I was steadier on my feet, we went to Plan B: Lisa drove us to a Raley's grocery store about 2 km from the hotel and we bought various groceries and take-out food to suit ourselves. This worked out pretty well. Both of us got what we want, and I broke my two-day-long fast enthusiastically.

I'm pretty happy about how everything turned out. We are in no hurry to leave tomorrow, so we can sleep in for a little bit, probably take advantage of the hotel's included breakfast, and then head for home. I doubt that I'll have any difficulty sleeping tonight.

When we were unloading wood, I started feeling some pain in my right shoulder. Over the past few days, it has gotten worse and has spread into my neck. I was having periodic soreness in my shoulder even before this latest bout of it, but it seems possible that the wood work made it worse. I think it's mostly due to repetitive motion issues caused by spending too much time at the computer and having poor posture while doing so. I ran out of aspirin, so this morning I ran over to Walgreens and bought more, plus some stronger topical ointment, as the willow-balm ointment I have been using (3% menthol active ingredient) has not been doing much good. What I probably need is some rest and less time at the keyboard, so I'll cut today's entry here.