New URL

My blog is now at rianjs.net.
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Home again

Home again, woohoo!

I registered my new domain name, paid for my webhosting, and hopefully, the DNS will propagate really soon.

Downloaded gallery. Now I hope I can get my pictures off of my cell phone somehow. Sending MMSes to myself don't seem to work. Nor does sending them to my email address. Gay. I have some pictures I want to post.

My intestines are rumbling.

Superbowl tonight. Pats are playing. :D

Real food

Saturday 12.35pm, the fifth day. Not much has happened. It has occurred to me that I haven't left this room since Tuesday, I guess. Well actually I guess I did on Wednesday when they did an abdominal X-ray. (Where I fell asleep on the x-ray machine.) I'm ready to leave.

Real food today, which actually tasted good. Shit, I wouldn't complain if I ate this good at school on a regular basis. Scrambled eggs, pancakes with some sort of cinnamon/apple rolled up in it, cream of wheat, apple juice, Ensure, rice krispies, maybe one other thing? Pretty much stuff with a million calories in it, thank God. At least I shouldn't lose much more weight.

Christ on a fucking bike I'm horny. It's been like a fucking week.

I'm so bored about blogging this goddamn hospital stay.

I think I can trace this partial bowel blockage back to this past summer in Costa Rica. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing started as a result of stress, and is irritated by shitty diets. Now if the doctor would stay for more than two minutes without his fucking entourage I could talk to him about it. I hate feeling like I'm on display.

I can't wait to buy a new cell phone and some nice headphones. My mom paid off my entire credit card balance, and I still have enough money left to pay for my trip to Europe with a lot left over. And then there's my tax refund which I could probably get finished up if I wasn't in this fucking place.

Ugh

1.38pm, Friday. Ugh, my intestines are rumbling like a motherfucker.

Is it weird to blog a hospital stay?

Clear liquids

Day, what? Four? Ugh, it's getting awfully redundant being here. The 5am wakeup for heparin and twenty minutes later, the goddamn blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen checks. Honestly, just let me sleep. I'm not going to fucking die on you. If I was, I'd likely have done it already. (Knock on wood.) Anyway, I've started eating again, if you can call it that. Clear liquids. Thus far my exciting diet has been chicken broth (I think), green jello, and water. I think there's some cranberry juice and some tea(?) left. I don't like tea, and I really don't need to take another shit. Everything tastes weird. Even my saliva. I wonder if that's normal. It's like the taste is delayed when I put the food in my mouth. It tastes good once it get there, but I noticed last night that my sense of taste was off. My saliva tasted bad to me. I chalk it up to not having had anything to eat or drink in like five days.

So I was lying around, and watching TV; some dumb show on USA. And there was a hospital scene where a doctor mentions a diagnosis of an obstructed bowel and one of the main characters immediately derides the idea. I was thinking to myself, "Hey retard, having an obstructed bowel will keep you in the hospital longer than whatever she has." Shit I would know. (No pun intended.) At least I get to eat today.

Oh yeah. I got woken up around six this morning because my IV machine was beeping (it was empty). So the nurse takes a look at my charts and decides that it would be okay to disconnect it because she sees that I'll be able to consume clear fluids and such. I was half asleep and thinking that something was wrong with that picture, but I couldn't figure it out. So I woke up like two hours later feeling like absolute shit. It occurred to me that there was no way in hell that I would be able to drink/eat enough to stay hydrated and whatnot for the first couple of hours. So I asked to be reconnected for a couple of hours, and pretty soon I felt a lot better. Hooray forethought. :rolleyes:

Mom's on her way, hopefully she'll bring me a razor and some real shampoo. I smell awful, and I look like a bum. Haha. I guess that's not funny. Ok well I'm back to watching The Crow. <3

Ups and downs.

It's 10.04 am on February 3. My third day in the hospital. It's been an up and down 24 hours. I've got my NG tube out as of this morning, which is a godsend. I woke up this morning with a massive amount of mucous around the goddamn thing. I could barely breathe, and speaking was out of the question. I called the nurse, and I had to write down what I was thinking. She offered to do a couple of things, none of which would work. I didn't try any of them, but sucking on ice sure as hell wasn't going to help when I could barely swallow. Finally Dr. Fischer came around and made the snap decision to remove the tube. Shit, I could have made that decision.

Strangely it reminds me of work sometimes when Rich can decide to do something, but the techs cannot. Or the old parable where the boss's boss decides to give a customer something despite the fact that they're clearly in the wrong, in they have no reason to give in whatsoever. Anyway, yeah. You know you want or should do something but simply don't have the authority to do it. That's how it was with the staff this morning. I almost took it out myself. Glad I didn't though. It wouldn't have been pleasant.

Kim came over yesterday and washed me up: gave me a thorough sponge bath and even washed my balls (LOL -- honestly it takes a special person to do that). She must have been here forever. At least six or seven hours. John came down too, that was nice. Paul came as well. It was like a freaking parade through here at night. The problem being that I'm not happy at night. I lose my good humor. I can't remember if I said that before; I know I've told a couple of people here. Kim and Paul, I think.

My nurse last night was really cute. She reminds me of a girl I used to date, except that she was blonde instead of red/blonde/brunette. Paul said that he'd bring me one of his laptops so I can watch my movies. Kim's bringing me a book and her gameboy. Woohoo. I might have something to do now. Apparently I am still stuck here until at least Sunday. Which totally fucking kills my Superbowl plans. Not that I even had any; it was too early.

I'm still starving. Still no food. Plenty of mucous though. Which just makes my stomach churn.
Right now they're moving my roommate "Milone." There's like six people getting ready to move him from his bed to a gurney. Two guys and like four girls. I feel like I should offer to help, but I'm sure I'd be worse than useless. LOL. I've lost so much weight that my sixpack is back. Which isn't a good thing, I'm pretty sure. Fortunately it appears to be mostly fat that has disappeared. Someone said to me the other day when I was in and out of consciousness that it was probably a good thing, because then I could start from a baseline when I'm healthy again and just build muscle. Heh. Fat chance of that happening given the ridiculous food that we have at school. Shit, I haven't eaten anything since Monday night and it's now Thursday.

I'm getting pretty fucking tired of people waking me up when I'm asleep at night. Last night I put my bed all the way down flat for the first time ever and actually really conked out. Of course an hour later someone fucking woke me up to ask how I was doing.

Hehe, it's weird I'm watching ER in the hospital. You'd think it shouldn't be allowed or something. Paul said that yesterday. Maybe he's onto something. Maybe not, because this show is f'n awesome. They just through some kid coming down from a crystal meth high in a snowbank and doused him with water. Somehow I doubt that would happen in real life.

Random thought for the day: I was sitting/laying in the ER staring at the ceiling and I wondered "how many people have died in this room?"

Nasogastric tubes, morphine, and Ativan

It's 6.28am on February 2. I am lying in my bed at Beth Israel Hospital, where I've been for almost 48 hours. I've got an NG tube stuck running up my nose and down my esophagus. It's to keep the pressure in my stomach down. The tube is connected to some sort of pump, and every once in a while it makes noises. Brownish fluid ocassionally goes through the tube off to some sort of holding chamber. It causes me a great deal of pain to swallow.

When I do swallow, about ten seconds after, the tube makes a sucking noise and whatever I just swallowed flows away. I've been on an IV since I arrived at the ER. Mostly just normal saline, but now they're giving my Levaquin and metronidazole. What for, I have no idea. I just know that I've been connected to a freaking IV for over 24 hours. And then at midnight, just after I had gotten into a deep sleep, the nurse came by to give me some heparin. What the hell I need heparin for, I have no idea. My blood should be thin enough from just all the intravenous fluids.

My good humor is mostly gone, now. The incessant joke-cracking has been replaced by sullen silence ever since I got this tube installed in my face, it hurts to swallow, to talk, and to adjust my neck too much. Kim and Adam stayed with me for most of the first night. Kim stayed all night, and Adam left probably around 4 because he had lab. Thank God for them.

When they stuck this tube up my nose and down my throat, I'm pretty sure I cried for an hour. It just sort of killed my spirit. It took three tries to get the thing installed. The second time, I pushed the nurse and Kim away and jerked the thing out, despite the fact that it was mostly in, which give me a bloody nose and tore my throat apart. That sucked balls. Of course, it ended up going in anyway the third time. For the third time they brought in like 4 big residents to do it. That was scary and it went all the way down. I didn't fight them.

The doctors came in a little while ago and asked how I was doing. Truthfully, I'm much better than I was when I was admitted. The Ativan, morphine, and phenergan have all worn off so I actually have some idea of what's going on right now. The docs will be back at 9.30 to give me a Barium enema.

Let me tell you about Barium. It tastes like chalk and makes you sick to your stomach. They want you to consume a godawful amount of it, and then they give you a CT scan. I don't remember much about the CT scan except breathing when they told me to breathe, and that it made me hot. I do remember trying to drink Barium and not really being able to do it. So they gave me Phenergan and Ativan. A shitload of Ativan. And pretty soon I had no idea what was going on. Thank God for Kim. She kept waking me up to get me to drink another cup. (I guess, I don't remember waking and drinking much beyond the second or third cup.)

So anyway. I guess I was in pain after the CT scan, so they gave me some morphine, which made me puke my brains out. That means that all of the barium that I had consumed came back for a second visit. So they gave me more phenergan and I managed to stop vomiting.

Anyway, the barium enema should be different. Rather than going down the front it'll go up the backside. Considering how vile drinking barium is, I'm not sure if I should be happy about this or not.

Somehow, my laptop screen got destroyed which means that I'll have to A) buy a new laptop or B) attempt to replace the screen. B seems the more likley option. I had asked Adam and Brian to bring my computer because I saw a wireless access point while I was in the ER bed. Now that I'm in my actual room, there's no signal. Perhaps they're just not broadcasting the SSID, I don't know. Whatever. So yeah, I'm tying this in notepad.

Kim has been here a lot. I am so glad for that. Adam, too, and Brian came along yesterday. I think it was yesterday. I was pretty much unconscious when they were here. Same story when my mom came to visit. Bob and Tera came as well -- Bob was fucking around with the sterile gloves ("Are you ready for your enema?") and Gene came by too. It was nice, because I wasn't expecting them to come at all. I hope more people come visit today. I think my dad's going to come. I hope so. I'll have him bring me reading materials. :D

Anyway, I still have no idea what the diagnosis is. I feel like I'm just on a giant rollercoaster ride, being strung along by The Man, and I'm just trying to keep my head above water. I'm expected to be here for a couple of days. I'm so hungry I'd eat just about anything (except barium, thank-you), but I'm on a strict IV diet until further notice. Most people would be happy about this, but not me... I'm not trying to lose weight. :p Thank God for medical insurance though: the ER visit alone would have cost a couple of thousand. Then a multi-day stay in the hospital? Holy cow, it would have been time to take out a second mortgage on the house.

So a day that started off great (Monday) to being one of the worst days of my life in recent memory. Damn. Makes you want to throw in the towel. All I can hope is that my shitty feelings in general will go away after this is all over. Lately I've just been feeling extremely blah: weak, unable to lift, and tired all the time. And always unhappy with the food selection for some reason. Maybe my intestinal problems have something to do with it. We shall see.

"I caught you a delicious bass."

I still cannot believe how much Napoleon Dynamite rocks. I swear, I hate the idea of sitting down and watching the movie, but whenever I do, it makes me laugh my ass off every time. Even when I'm sick and just want to fall asleep. And there are these little nuances that you catch with every single viewing that you'd missed before. OMG it's just a perfect movie.