I don’t feel like whipping up a new banner for this one, so here’s a picture of Maya sleeping with a copy of Robotron 2084 for Atari 7800. If this doesn’t warm your heart, it’s probably because you don’t have one.
Normally, I’d be posting a written review of sorts since that’s sort of the regular deal (and I sort of skipped one last week to make way for our other regular feature of letting the world know on every 31st day of the month that I have yet to watch the Star Trek: Section 31 streaming television feature starring Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh), but when I saw the date, I opted for this commentary instead.
For you see, today marks one year since I was hospitalized for a pulmonary embolism that left me short of breath and was on the verge of taking my life… or so I’ve been told.
I haven’t been keeping you folks up on the recovery process because, well, there’s not much to report; I take medication every day, I go for in for the barrage of checkups on various things, and we continue accordingly. And then there are some folks who have no clue what I’m talking about, so this is what today’s commentary will be about; a refresher of what happened last year, what we’ve been doing to get better, and where we’re at now.
Your usual happy-feeling fun time will resume tomorrow unless I can find another fun video for the Extra Bits. Beyond that, sit tight.
So let’s backtrack to a year and two days ago. I know I felt a harsh pain and a shortness of breath while climbing stairs at home on a Friday afternoon that I assumed was stress and hard depression and that it would let up after a couple days… and when it did, the decision was made to call up an ambulance and get to be hospital, where it was confirmed that I had blood clots in my lung that made it difficult to breath and some of that was even reaching my heart. It got to a point where they had to shoot me with antibiotics intravenously to treat the condition, which lasted the better part of the day and let’s just say that I wasn’t a happy camper. Probably the most miserable experience in my entire life… death would have been the better option.
But after a day or so, things looked good, they moved me to a residency, where I stayed for a few days. Trying my best to take short walks as best as I can, but still struggling for a while. Only having an old laptop and a mobile phone with a tepid charge rate at best with occasional visits kept me from going insane… though mind you, it was less the recovery process and more the waiting to get home. Readings were fine enough that after a week and change, I was allowed to go home, requiring that I take some medication on a daily basis for life as well as monthly injections to treat my Crohn’s condition, which had been acting up quite fierce as of late.
I’ve written about this in detail in a previous Bite commentary shortly after my release, so I won’t repeat the whole thing here… mostly because I can barely remember the details and there’s a more timely commentary post that does a better job of jotting things down a bit. My recovery these days involves taking bi-monthly injections to treat my bowels as well as the usual daily medication. For the most part, I feel fine. I might feel episodes of bad stomach pains due to certain foods being consumed that I should probably avoid, but as far as chest pains and shortness of breath, I have been – for the most part – scott free in that regard. Now the only fatigue I feel is after an intense walking session in the park whenever I’m afforded the chance… something I look forward to in the coming months now that the snow is starting to clear up and the temperatures are easing up slightly.
To tell you the truth, I don’t think about the “process” because there’s not much to it. Every six months, I make a litany of medical stops to take some tests and get some readings. People at work were very graceful and understanding that this needs to be treated with care. The best I could hope for these days is that things are progressing and we can continue as we were. I know that I’ve got a pill to take twice a day for the rest of my life to treat the blood clots; that’s since become part of the daily routine. There is an injection for the Crohn’s that’s going to take a year or so to put up with… I do it at home and it usually takes 5-10 minutes to get the thing done.
And so here we are… one year later, I’m feeling better than I had been, I’m relatively pain free, and I’ve gained a bit of unwanted weight back… not a whole lot. I stay within the upper 70 kg (170-175 lbs.) range, which is normal. I used to be a much heavier kid. I’d very much like to keep that weight off and have adjusted some habits, though the irony here is that I used to feel much healthier when I was fat. Not that I’d advocate obesity or anything like that; I like being somewhat lighter. I like being able to fit in pants that doesn’t have a chokehold on my waist line. I’d like to keep it that way for as long as I can. Would be nice.
Anyway, that’s the story. We’ll see about throwing together a funny banner for this post down the road, but for now, I’ll leave you with the commentary I wrote last year detailing this whole process. It’s not a particularly fun read, but it tells the whole story, I guess. There are other random posts I’ve done on the matter, but those don’t really matter. This one kinda, sorta does.
The Bite Commentary #09 – Mortality, Crohn’s, And Crud
Later, kids. We’ll get back to the fun stuff tomorrow.
dtm666 