Hospital

I have more experience in hospitals than someone might imagine. Not as a patient, but as someone that used to scrape people up off the pavement and rush them to the ER in the back of an ambulance. For about three years, I spent more time in hospitals than I care to remember. During training for that gig, I tore my right ACL, the anterior cruciate ligament, basically the ligament that holds the knee together. For reasons lost to the mists of time, I never had it surgically repaired, and I've had a "bad knee" ever since. Aside from a faux heart attack in 1998, (I'll tell that story another time) I haven't been in the hospital since.

On December 12, 2022, five days after I had the procedure to lance and drain an infected puncture hole on the bottom of my left food, I spiked a small temperature. Annie informed me that we were going back to Urgent Care to have it looked at. We got there around noon, and they told us that all their appointment slots were full and if we wanted to be seen that day, we should go to the ER. 

We did, and waited five hours to be seen, which is normal. My case was urgent but not emergent. We got seen in the early evening, finally, and the ER resident took one look at my foot and told me I was being admitted. That was all fine and good, but they didn't have a room for me for almost 24 hours. What followed next was perhaps the most uncomfortable 24 hours of my entire life.

At the top of this post, I mentioned that I had a lot of experience in hospitals. I should have specified that I have a lot of experience in ERs. The ER I was in was a busy one, probably either the #1 or #2 ER in the county. It's also a Level 1 Trauma Center, complete with a helipad about fifty yards from the back doors. I counted three separate chopper landings/takeoffs as I was trying to sleep. 

Anyone that's had a stay in the hospital knows the routine: Waking you every four to five hours to take blood and/or give medicine, take vital signs, etc. You're in an unfamiliar place with perhaps a little more anxiety than usual, there's almost nothing to do except read and watch TV. The hours stretch on into seeming eternity, and as hard as the nursing staff tries, you slowly feel yourself turning into a piece of meat to them, a chore that has to be accomplished, a tickbox on a checklist. It's almost as if the bloods they take four times a day are slowly draining the humanity out of you.

Along with that experience in the ER, I have a fair amount of medical knowledge. Once I heard the "C" word (cellulitis) I knew a couple of things. First, my foot, my leg and even my life were now in danger. If the infection wasn't controlled -- and quickly -- Bad Things would start to happen. Luckily, the twice a day Vancomycin infusions got that shit under control -- but it took four days. Each infusion was 90 minutes, by the way. Plus the new-to-me insulin injections five times a day! My first blood sugar level in the room was 315 or so. (Normal is 80-110.) 

Being in the hospital was a sobering experience. It's not out of the realm to describe it as an eye-opening experience. I've been lucky; I've always looked younger than I am, by a lot. People do a double-take when they hear I'm 56 and have three granddaughters. I also don't feel or really "act" 56, either. I've never thought of myself as "middle-aged" or "old." Just...me. Annie and I joke about how old we are based on some pop-culture references, but I really didn't feel old until recently. 

Someone asked me years ago what the definition of middle age was -- when did you know you were middle aged? My answer was poetic, but it's still apropos:  When there are most yesterdays than tomorrows. I'm certainly past the halfway point in my life and now the choices I made as a younger man are coming home to roost. 

I've been a "big guy" since puberty. My weight has been up and down over the years. At my highest I was 420lbs on a six-foot, two-inch frame. This morning I was 341. 

I don't ever want to go back to the hospital. Not for something preventable, anyway. Something I can control through diet, exercise, and medication. 

The hours I spent alone in that room were a mixture of boring and terrifying. I looked back at all the decisions I'd made, all the bad food choices, all the weight I'd put on, all the times I'd virtually assaulted my own body, my own endocrine system... 

There comes a point when you lose control of it. When your body starts rejecting what you're doing to it, and then it's all out of your hands and into the hands of well-meaning, highly educated strangers that work hard to see their patients as people but end up seeing an endless parade of problems, symptoms, diagnoses and treatment plans. Before the HIPAA Act, it was common for healthcare providers to reduce you to your condition, your disease, your malady. "The broken leg in 604; the diabetic in 124," etc.

Feeling that out of control made me embrace being in control. Controlling what I put in my mouth has been a revelation. I'm gaining momentum now. In one week it will be 60 days since I last ate fast food. Sixty days since my last sandwich or bread. 

This morning my fasting blood sugar was 81.