Saturday, July 08, 2006

I'm Home.....

Well, friends and neighbors, boys and girls, brethren and cistern I have completed my brief stint at Cleveland Clinic. If over 16 weeks can be considered a brief stint. The "bare bones"-

After dinner March 14 (pork chops), I was suffering a little gastric distress the next day and didn't go to work. I felt as if I were wearing a steel cummerbund that was 3 sizes too small. The pain was unspeakable. Tried some OTC remedies - no joy. So the lovely-and-talented wife took me to KPER where they ran a WHOLE bunch of tests and pictures. I was then sent to South Pointe Hospital (you don't want to know how hard it is to get a hospital bed) for surgery. By the time I got there, my bloodwork analyses were coming in and, upon discovering that the pancreas was involved, surgery was ruled not an option. I was admitted to to their ICU until March 27 (12 days!) until massive organ failures lead by the kidneys lead to me being intubated and transferred to the ICU at Cleveland Clinic Downtown. I was then transferred to the step-down cardiac unit. An MRI told them that 60% of my pancreas was necrotic (dead). The heart and lungs were failing at the same time.
On April 14 I was sent to a Sub Acute unit to begin the infamous "you can only have half a cup of ice chips to eat this shift. Period. No water" diet. It had been decided to be conservative in their approach. On April 16, I "crashed" and was sent to the ICU. I went back to the Sub Acute on April 21 and started rehab under the same lavish diet. I crashed again on April 30. An operation to debride the pancreas, sew the perforated bowel and remove the gall bladder was done on May 1. I was held in an unconscious state for 4 days. Then it was back to the chip diet.

More later - it's dinner time......

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Super color scheme, I like it! Good job. Go on.
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