Wherein I make my heartfelt thanks to all.

Tandalayo_Scheisskopf

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Fri Nov-07-08 04:01 PM
Original message

Wherein I make my heartfelt thanks to all.

Last Thursday, I started getting a stomach ache, centered on my umbilicus and radiating downward. Being a protypical tough guy, with lots of martial arts training, I sneered at this pain. It would pass, right? Interestingly, said pain was having none of that sneering crap and set out to kick my ass. Soon, I noticed that the pain was radiating to the right side of my abdomen. I had a sense that was not A Good Thing®. I went to the ever-reliable interwhasis thingamabob and looked up "Appendicitis". Yes, we were getting consistent with appendicitis here. It suggested taking my temp. I walked to the local drug emporium and gift shoppe and got myself one of them new-fangled beeping thingies. Weird. Where the hell is the unreadable scale and the toxic mercury? Would this thing even work?

Well, my first temp was 99.7. I waited a half hour and it was 99.9. Another half hour and I was 100.7. That was it. Time to hie and fie myself to a decent local hospital. I called first and they knew I was coming.

In I go adter a surprising lack of administravia, get into an exam room, get into hospital mufti(you know, the kind your ass hangs out of...) and a doctor comes in. He proceeds to palpate my McBurney's point and then they spend the next half hour prying my fingernails and toenails from the ceiling tiles. Yup. Definitely some peronteneal inflamation there, kids. Oh yeah. Press down, let go rapidly, T_S goes off like a shuttle.

So I spend the next 1:30 drinking "Contrast", essentially radio-opaque bug juice you remember from day camp. I have had worse, like Martini's at a Holiday Inn bar in a shithole town. Then I got crammed into a big, whirring donut with an IV bolus shooting some stuff that kinda felt like liquid electricity into my arm(radio-opaque dye) and then off to the toidy to slake the snake and then back to the exam room. Doctor comes in, says he's the surgeon, I have quite the ruptured appendix and either it or me is a goner. I chose appendix. I'm a chickenshit like that. I mean, we grew up together, but there are limits.

Of course, before I went in, the nice lady came in and gave me the smoking cessation lecture. I appreciate the sentiment, but the timing was...a little flawed.

I went into the OP, they switched me off(for verily, with today's anesthetics, that is what happens: they push that sucker into your IV and it's like they flipped the non compis mentis switch. You are out. No 10 count).

I woke up about 2.5 hours later with not a speck of saliva within a parsec of my mouth and the anesthesiologist screaming at me that I had to quit smoking. Really. I love Seventh Day Adventist Hospitals. I am surprised they didn't give me a Cashew Butter enema, too. And maybe a fake hot dog facial.

I was in there for 5 days, 400 gallons of Saline IV and 12 gallons of Zosyn, an IV antibiotic that I understand beats ZipStrip as a paint remover. And it's a floor wax.

I learned a 2mg Morphine push kills pain, but hurts going in. You don't really sleep on it either. Just kinda go lalalalala for 15 minutes, until they come in to take your vitals again and pull another gallon of blood. I literally ran out of veins in the mainline of my left arm. Note: Now I really fucking hate needles. I mean, I hated them before, but any needle that comes near me, for a while, dies.

So I layed there and listened to my bonehead room mates argue with the staff. About little things like their 93% blocked carotids and rotten gall bladders. The guy with the carotid face planted from it. Right side of his head was one huge bruise. Did he want to listen? Nah. He watches Doctor shows. He knows best. I understand the McCain voters a lot better now.

A digression: I don't have TV here. What the screaming FUCK is it with all the judge shows on TV? In fact, how do you people watch ANY of that crap. Even the good stuff sucks sweaty balls!

When I came home, I felt like hammered shit. That said, I was starved for some contact with the outside world and some news. I opened up Thunderbird to check email and one of the first things I saw was an email from, of all people, one William Rivers Pitt, a writer of small note from Bastahn MA, wishing me well and telling me I should get back soon to read all the messages. What messages? What the hell is Will doing writing me? I mean after all, we have corresponded, and talked on the phone twice and whatnot, but hell...I am kinda like the wiseacre kid making cracks from the back of the class and he's like, you know...Will Pitt. And all.

Then I got here and saw the threads and well-wishes and all the nice thing and the expressed concern...

Jeesus, people, I don't deserve you.

I don't have much family left and what I have, well, I would be far better off leaving that discussion for therapy. I have good friends who have been there for me thoughout this, and they know who they are, including and especially Tace. But when so many folks reach out in this manner, at a time like this...it truly is overwhelming. I tend to, and I suspect many others here do as well, go through life not knowing or recognizing how blessed I am by the good folks around me. By not seeing that people care or that they are even capable of caring. It's a fault of mine and I suspect that others amongst us do it as well. The last 8 years seem to have encysted a lot of us in a hard, nacrous shell.

You do me such honor with your friendship, with your caring and your patience. Your good wishes touched me in ways I have not been touched in a long time, since I am such a loner in real life.

Thank you for your good wishes, thank you for your caring and thank you for being here. DU is far more than a forum.