What trump is doing now reminds me of a personal experience...

[LuckyCharms]

I was an inpatient once for 5 days or so with a painful condition. The nurses were administering Fentanyl via IV.

I have no memory of this, but apparently I had gone through almost all of my phone contacts, called them, and tried to keep them on the phone for an hour while I spewed complete nonsense.

I didn't learn about this until I left the hospital.

In my opinion, whether it be the steroids or whatever else he is on, he's going to have to be weaned off the drugs at some point, and when the drugs are no longer supporting him, it is going to be like a concrete block was dropped on his head.

In my experience, you don't spend ANY amount of time as an inpatient, and then just bounce back when you are released, unless you are being propped up by heavy duty pharmaceuticals.

[FoxNewsSucks]

1. Makes sense.

It'll be far far worse for MF45. Even without drugs and withdrawal, he's a blithering imbecile who rambles on and can't think or form complete sentences anyway.

[world wide wally]

2. They will just keep him on the drugs indefinitely

[soothsayer]

3. Good! He can sleep through his lame duck period and do no harm

[world wide wally]

4. Before the first debate, my daughter asked me, "Uppers or downers"?

It was obviously uppers

[Ms. Toad]

5. While i completely agree he is due for a crash,

Your comment is a gross overgeneralization. I spent a full month in the hospital, and returned to work the next day.

There are many different reasons for hospitalization. Not all require either heavy drugs or an extended recovery time. In my case, the hospitalization was solely for the administration of IV heparin for a blood clot. There aren't any lingering effects from heparin, and the remaining effects from the blood clot were minor.

On the other hand, I have required time to recover from each of my in-patient surgeries.

How quickly you recover depends a lot on why you were hospitalized, not the fact of hospitalization.

In trumps case i entirely agree his symptoms are being masked, and i expect he will crash once the steroid masking stops.

[LuckyCharms]

7. Not disagreeing with you, just relaying my experiences, but...

I have personally never had a situation in which I've been admitted unless I was very ill.

Locally, everything that can possibly be performed on an outpatient basis is done so. For inpatients, medical insurance companies usually don't care if you are feeling in tip top shape or not. They usually push for the shortest length of stay that is clinically reasonable, so much of your actual convalescing is done at home after the stay.

I have never had a situation where I felt good coming out of an inpatient stay. And in addition to the comfort drugs (I have not always been given pain medication or other comfort drugs when I have been admitted), I'm also referring to the very illness that caused you to be admitted in the first place. It has always taken some time for me to get back on my feet.

Considering trump's situation, I really can't imagine how he can portray a superman image, immediately upon release, without the drugs doing the talking.

[Ms. Toad]

8. I've had more than one.

One of the quirks of IV heparin (which was not authorized for outpatient care both times I was hospitalized on it) is that neither the medication nor the underlying condition impair your ability to function.

While I was hospitalized for 30 days, I did 1/2 mile laps as fast as I could walk around the floor twice a day (actually part of the therapy). I was walking fast enough that I had to take a shower after each time to cool down and get rid of the sweat.

The second time, I was supposed to be hospitalized for 2 weeks (same routine) because insurance refused to pay for the subcutaeous heparin injections that were available by then. The outpatient therapy was rejected by my insurance company (same therapy that served as a plot line on the show ER, since the rejection was so ridiculous). Fortunately, I was luckier than the ER patient - my doctors were able to convince the insurance compant to pay for the $5-600 treatment in lieu of hospitalizing me, so I was only in for a couple of days. At the time, the treatment was considered experimental, so hospitalization was mandatory unless a special exception was made.

The second was, incidentally, at the beginning of reading week my final semester in law school. So I was discharged and immediately took my finals - and did well enough that I still graduated as the top student in the class. (The first time - the 30-day hospitalization - I returned to teaching in an inner city high school the next day.)

So it really isn't the fact of hospitalization that incapacitates you.

As to Trump - they hospitalized him partly because they were afraid his symptoms would become dramatically worse - but more because had he waited their expectation was that he would need to be transferred on a stretcher - and he was not willing to tolerate that image. Steroids are powerful masking drugs, so while I believe his symptoms are far worse than he is letting on, an ordinary person would not have been hospitalized with the mild symptoms he was reportedly showing.

[bigtree]

6. they'll literally need to wean him off of that steroid

...can't be suddenly dropped, because of serious withdrawals.