Rusty's Armory

Tedious Update …

Posted on December 1, 2021

I hope this the end of my hospital/near death stories.  You probably hope so too!  This is to update those of you who are interested on a few things that I omitted in my earlier facebook posts. 

I went to the ER after a week on antibiotics from my personal physician that didn’t seem to help.  I foolishly took time to make that decision a week to see if the medicine worked.  It didn’t.  It was procedure time, and when I went into the hospital, they were on me like bees on syrup.  My kidneys had shut down, my heart was in constant arrhythmia and the docs later told me that I probably would have died had I waited until Monday like I first thought.

I had been having problems with urinating for a few months earlier but put off seeing the doctor until it was more convenient to me.  Yeah, I know.  Stoopid with a double oh. So, the night before I was going to call the doc again, in straining to pee I could feel I broke something, and finally told Snookums to drive me to the hospital.

The doctors were on me like bees in a hive.  The ER doctor hovered.  The urologist on- call inserted a large foley catheter, as I howled in pain.  The Cardiologist on-call was on the spot and had me hardwired into the shocker.  I am happy to report that I didn’t trigger the shocking machine.

They debated much on the medications I was given.  Some of the cardiologist’s meds were at odds with the urologist and vice versa.  They rinsed my bladder for over a week or two, but since I lost all track of time, I am sure I got the sequence and times wrong. 

But to continue.  You know you are in trouble when you see nothing but doctors around your gurney saying OMG! Huge clots flowed out of the Foley and into the bag.  The doctors sounded like fishermen comparing the sizes of their catch as each stream of clot oozed out into the clear tubes.  They couldn’t believe that I waited that long to come in.

I hovered between deep sleep and periods of lucidity while my bladder was rinsed of blood clots and other detritus, and somewhere in all that I went into the cath-lab for four stents.  It was painful as all hell which was unusual for me.  My other balloons and stents didn’t hurt like that.  But what I thought was indigestion for the last many years was angina.  Finally, after years and years, success with that!

I was then wheeled out to the recovery room in intense pain where the nurse offered me Tylenol® and I went off on her.  I feel a bit guilty of that now, but I felt that my pain wasn’t being addressed.  Finally, the Cardiologist gave me fentanyl and the pain sort of subsided to the back of my mine but didn’t totally disappear.  To this point, the doctors don’t think that was from the cath, but that’s where it started, so I am assuming they bruised something near the backbone.  They gave me topical pain killers, but they didn’t stop the discomfort.  But in time, that did go away near the end of my stay.

Then I forgot how to breathe when I fell asleep.  I have suffered for years with night paralysis, but it never effected my breathing.  But waking up trying to remember how to breathe frightened me.  They put me on a CPAP breathing machine, and that solved the breathing problem, and the heart pain.  I haven’t had that happen since I left the hospital, though, but a Sleep Study looms big in my future.  

I was discharged two weeks later and have felt pretty good except for a time when the Foley was clogged, and I went to the ER to have it changed.  I failed the pee test and I expect that the old Roter-Rooter of the prostate also looms in my near future.  I can’t say I am fond of that idea, even though I have been assured that it is relatively painless. Doctors seem to have a different standard for ‘discomfort’ than I do.

Physically I am very weakened.  Just the 30’ walk to the kitchen tires me.  Recovery in that area is going to be a long time routine, and I am not so sure that I am up to it.  I am tired.

So, thanks for the prayers! I couldn’t believe how many people where praying people, including a couple of nurses!  I am sure that is the reason I have come out of the experience reasonably well.

Thank you all!!