Back From Hospital Again
They put more holes in me. My abdominal region is looking more like a construction site. Perhaps an oil well dig. With three holes now. One for my dialysis catheter that is still there as a backup, one for my abdominal tissue swelling that they put in Thursday and took out Friday and another for the behind the kidney lake of dark fluids, which is still draining. Smelly amber fluid with the odor of a sick mans urine. I have the rift valley of the kidney implant scar going across my lower abdominal wall from the right to just above my penis. Its a mess down there.
I went to Kaiser to have my stint taken out Wednesday, they didn’t like the look of it so they said wait until January. Then the Kidney doctors wanted me to check in because of the Fever I got on Christmas eve. Only had a temp of 100.5 but that was enough for them to decide I needed to come in, on Wednesday, after Christmas, no need to disturb the doctor’s holiday. Although Cedar Sinai is a Jewish hospital, they seem to let anybody with the right degrees work there. Non discriminatory in that sense. Their matzo ball soup is horrible, or perhaps that is what matzo soup is supposed to taste, a bland piece of an indefinable round ball, and noodles in clear broth without a hint of spicing or flavoring of any kind, I had a couple sips and put it aside. That is certainly something only eaten because you have too, not because you want too.
They kept me overnight and did the procedures of draining fluid Thursday afternoon after making me stay on an air only diet from midnight. Thursday am the forced me to accept an IV in my left arm, something that never worked properly and caused pain whenever they flushed it. The drainage operation in the CT room, supposedly a 20 minute procedure took over two hours. My back was killing me on that narrow hard bench, so they gave me morphine, not enough to get me loaded, just enough to take the edge off the pain in my back. Not more than 8 milligrams, I asked for a full load, 10 mg, but they are stingy with painkillers over there.
I was so wiped out after that they kept me over night and Friday afternoon they removed the abdominal drain, and sent me home. I got morphine a couple more times before I left stingy little 4 mg. doses. When I got home about 8 that night I took a couple of hydrocodones, generic Norco, and went to sleep dragging my drainage bag with me. Since then I have gotten used to it strapped to my leg or trailing behind me like a starving Biafran shadow.