Gentle Giant weight loss and recuperation thread #2

[Systematic Chaos]

12/17/06 - Day 89

First off, let me start this by saying yes, it really is me posting this time and not Jeanette. After 10 days at the hospital I am finally back home! :)

I have so much to say right now that I have not a clue where to even begin. I suppose it would be easiest to just give a chronological rundown of how my hospital stay went, but then after that I have so much more to talk about including the fact that one of my best friends is staying with us now and he is facing a lot of similar problems to mine. In fact, we had to have him taken to the hospital just yesterday. I kid you not....

Going back to Dec. 8, which was the day I ended up admitted to the hospital. I showed up for my wound care visit with Jeanette, who had just been approved for the same four 10-hour day schedule at work which I have. The doctor came in and noticed that my left shin was really flaring up, and that my left foot and right shin were not really progressing much (but thankfully not relapsing either). In addition, there was an odor and coloration emanating from the left shin which was not at all good. They made some calls to admissions in the main hospital building and I went ahead and walked the short downhill trip (which took just about everything I had energywise). There was a bit of a wait while the insurance aspect of all this was sorted out, so Jeanette and I went ahead and bought some lunch at the cafeteria. I had a plate of salad and a bowl of macaroni salad on the side, with a banana. A while later I was taken by wheelchair to a private room, which I thought was very nice. I kept the same room for the entire ten days, which made things easy. I gave my keys, wallet and other unnecessary items to Jeanette to take back home and she spent most of the evening with me, as well as a good chunk of Saturday and Sunday.

On the plus side, I had access to pain management when I needed it, and this facilitated plenty of opportunity to exercise and gain my stamina back without undue pain. I spent many sessions doing squats in my room, or marching in place for several minutes at a time, picking my feet up as high as I could until the muscles in my thighs began to cramp. Near the end of the stay I could remain on my feet doing this for well over fifteen minutes at a stretch without feeling overexerted or having the pain in my lower back which became almost unbearable as my weight increased this year due to so little physical activity. I was also kept on a low-calorie diet which, while it could have been much healthier, still allowed me to reduce my appetite so that now I'm satisfied on much less food. My sweat pants which I could barely squeeze into on the 8th now are much more comfortable. I have no way of knowing how much weight I dropped, as I will explain shortly, but I would bet money it was a pound a day or more for the duration of my stay.

In the negative column, we have quite a few things. First of all, the bed I had was certainly able to handle my weight, but it wasn't designed to be very comfortable and was simply way too narrow. I asked about getting something larger but apparently there was little they could do. I had a lot of back pain when I woke up, and many times my entire butt fell asleep when I was on my back, even when I had the bed set up in more of a sitting position. Next, one of the nurses almost gave me the wrong medication entirely one time, and if I hadn't been paying very close attention I could have been in serious trouble. Other than that one episode, everything else went smoothly enough in that regard. For a time I was on intravenous antibiotics and on the last night I had the dubious pleasure of getting several cc of saline pumped and some antibiotic pumped not into my bloodstream, but rather into one localized area of my forearm due to either the vein collapsing or the needle slipping out. I discovered this when the normal burn from a saline flush was only getting stronger after half an hour, and part of my arm was very swollen. I came very close to losing it at that point because never before in my life had I even been on an IV and I didn't even know such a thing could happen. Another stupid thing was that there was no scale in the entire hospital that could weigh even a 500 lb. patient. I think the highest went to 450, and I'm still at least a little over that, so I can only guess what my real weight is. My primary doctor's scale weighs to 440 or 450, and I fully expect to be able to get a reading from it once I see him again. When I do, I'll post it here.

On a more serious note, there were a couple of really petty delays which I believe caused my stay to be unnecessarily extended by at least 3 or 4 days. First, it was discovered that the operating tables at the facility were only made to hold 300 lbs. Now, I am guesstimating that at this point I'm in the 460's. I know that's pretty damn huge, but the first nurse who saw me upon arrival herself admitted to seeing people in excess of 600 lbs. come through there. Before my antibiotic regimen was changed from IV to oral, there was a two day snafu over how they were going to insert the PICC line (otherwise known as a semi-permanent IV line) into my upper arm. It was finally decided that they could simply do it right at my bed. Just as the team came up to do it, the infectious disease specialist who was assigned to me decided that I appeared to be healing okay and that the regimen could be done orally. The very next day, it was decided that I should have the complete angiogram-style dye test done on the arteries and veins in my legs to check for clots. To me, this makes perfect sense. However, after another two days of hemming and hawing, it was found that neither would the operating table respond to the Anthony Robbins seminar on overachievement nor could I magically lose 50+ lbs. per day for three days straight. It took them that long to remember that which they already knew. :eyes: Therefore, they just went with the far inferior ultrasound test on the veins and arteries in my thighs. The lower legs couldn't even be checked due to the presence of my wounds and bandages applied thereto. As if this weren't all upsetting enough, I then had to wait another three days just for everyone to figure out which kind of medicated wrappings they wanted to use on my legs while I heal. At first, they mentioned some other type of thing only to find that they didn't have it. So then, they switched it to this stuff called Unaboot and that took until today to finally show up. I was beginning to think that I was the first recorded case of obesity-related circulation problems in the history of mankind and that the treatments were being invented on the fly or something. Jeanette and I were both extremely adamant that come today, there was to be no more screwing around and that I would be coming home fully treated and ready for home care to take over, unless it could be shown that I had a blood clot which required further treatment. I guess someone finally got the idea.

One final rant I have is about the extremely questionable food choices not only where I was, but at hospitals in general. I consider myself fortunate to be someone who can't stand eggs unless they are extremely well cooked and then smothered in so much ketchup or other crap that they're no longer detectable to the palate. I am in the predicament I'm in because of bad food choices in spite of having enough information to know better, so at least eggs are one less thing I need to worry about when depression drives me to want to dig my own grave with a knife and fork. :P My question then is why would a hospital, whose job it is to try and help people like me turn their lives around ever in a million years want to offer me the equivalent of an Egg McMuffin on the diabetic breakfast menu? Why are so many of the choices, even for diabetics, heavy in enriched bread and pasta when there are whole grain and sprouted grain options easily available (especially to a hospital, one would think) which are far more suitable? Even before I was forced to spend my time getting more intensive care to help turn myself around, I was already planning on going back to the type of diet which has allowed me to lose weight in the past and thrive without feeling deprived - at least until horrible depression set in, at which point I didn't really care. Where were beans as an excellent protein source? I had that option all of once in ten days, and everything else was chicken, fish, and so forth which are high in unassimilable protein and therefore hard on the kidneys. I mean, given that I was on large doses of antibiotics which are known to cause massive stomach discomfort and gas, are a few good bean toots such a horrible thing? While the overall taste and presentation of the meals was fairly good, I felt that I was forced to make a number of compromises against what I consider to be a suitable meal plan, just to be able to eat. The two times I had Jeanette bring me food from outside, I ate it in lieu of the hospital food and I did my best to keep it as healthy as possible. One time, I had a couple of the $1 CBR burritos from El Pollo Loco which consist only of pinto beans, rice and a bit of cheese in a tortilla. The other I had her bring me a couple of sub sandwiches the same way Jared from Subway did; one veggie, one turkey, no cheese. Still high in refined carbs but nice and low in fat. I think I did pretty well overall, and now I have the chance to do even better because there just isn't a need to buy any more food out, since grocery delivery is available.

I need to tell you all about one of my best friends, who is staying with us now. I will get into that more after I get up tomorrow, because it's getting late now and Jeanette needs to go to bed for work tomorrow and I am flat out exhausted. It makes for another very interesting story, but I think you will agree that the situation presents a very good opportunity to me and it is yet another reason for me to get better and do the right things by myself. I feel more positive about my prospects than at any time since this foot condition started.