Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

This afternoon, Lisa took me in to Renown Hospital and their new post-surgical care center, which only opened this past week. This led to their automated system sending me an automatic message saying to go to 75 Pringle Ste 600, but me getting a call just as we arrived at the parking garage that I was to actually to go to Suite 900.

Things were not too busy and they took me to a room where they took my vitals, after which one of the surgical PAs came in and examined me. I told her about the swelling down below my belly button, and she looked at and felt it. She thinks that it's a common thing in this kind of surgery, and that as long as it doesn't get infected or painful or otherwise present as a problem, it should heal on its own. After checking me out, she had the nurse come in and use a surgical staple-removal tool to remove the "zipper" in my belly.

I expected the removal to be painful, but it was not. No local anesthetic was necessary, as they pulled each staple. There will be a scar, but the skin has knitted together pretty nicely and they think it was healing well. They did tell me to try not to itch it, but also to not apply anti-itch ointment for a while yet.

There's still some healing to go, but it really does look like things are looking very positive. I'm feeling better and better each day. I'm feeling much more optimistic about Kayla's planned trip to BC at the end of next month.

As part of the buy-nothing day protest, I was told that paying with cash if necessary was preferable. There's a Starbucks (and a hotel!) in the Renown Hospital complex in the building where my removal procedure was done. I used my Starbucks points, on the theory that I wasn't spending money that day. I don't know if that makes a difference.

After I got my coffee, Lisa and I went home. More about what happened after that in the next entry.

I have been spending much of the past three days sleeping. It does seem to help. I continue to feel slightly better each day. Last night, however, while I got to bed early, I also woke up extra early: 3 AM. But after being up for a while, I went back to bed and slept until nearly noon.

Tomorrow, I intend to try to get back to the Day Jobbe. I'm not looking forward to the backlog.

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.

This is the first of a series of backdated journal entries about my trip to Renown Hospital in Reno, where I had emergency surgery and was hospitalized for a week. There is apt to be medical TMI in these entries. You should skip them if discussion of surgery and medical issues squicks you.

( To the ER and Into Surgery )

After they set me up in a room in the ICE, I mostly slept. I was not in much pain, thanks to all of the medications.