Update on my five plus day hospital stay.

In my last post I told you I was going to the Walk in Clinic on Monday and ask that they order a cat scan to see in fact if I have Diverticulitis.  They found a place to do a cat scan that day which was just down the street at Lee Memorial Health Park Hospital.  After the cat scan was read they told me to go across the street to the emergency room.  The emergency room reminded me of what you would find in downtown Chicago, New York, or LA.  There were probably 75 people in the waiting rooms and hall ways.  Some on gurneys and some in wheel chairs holding barf buckets.  Some covered with blankets etc. trying to stay as comfortable as possible.  When I finally got called to be admitted which took about an hour I was told the wait to see a triage person would be not longer than another four hours.  We went over to the emergency room at 4:30 pm.  At 10:30 I was put on a gurney and since there were no rooms open in the hospital and no open rooms available in the emergency room I was parked in the hall of the emergency room where they started administering antibiotics intravenously at 11:00 pm.  Around 2:00 am or so they moved me to what I thought was a room but it wasn't.  It must have been just a room and not an actual hospital room.  I found this out when a housekeeping person came in the morning and we were talking and as she was leaving she asked me if I was going to get a room?  I then figured out that the room I was in was not an actual room.  Later in the day they moved me to the Penthouse room on the eighth floor. They must have felt bad on how they treated me the night before because the room on the eighth floor was a private room with a view facing west of a large lake and a condo complex and then in the distance you could see the hotels on the beach.  It was very nice if you have to be in a hospital.  Every body would come in the room just to check out the view out the window.  Whenever I would close the drapes so the sun didn't glare on the tv some body would want to open them back up until I told them I couldn't see the television at certain times of the day when the drapes were open.



I was diagnosed with Diverticulitis with a developing abscess.  I was being seen by at least seven different doctors.  Half of the doctors I still have no idea what they did.  I had a generalist who was kind of overseeing my overall care but there were also surgeons who thought they would need to do exploratory surgery, and there was one doctor who was a specialist of infectious diseases who prescribed my antibiotics.  The others I am not sure what they did.  Maybe they were there just to get paid because to my knowledge they did nothing in my actual treatment. 

My treatment consisted of giving me one powerful dose of antibiotics intravenously every 24 hours.  I was given nothing to eat until Thursday when I was put on a clear liquid diet.  Since I wasn't eating they had me on a sugar water IV.  Other than that it was the usual having your vitals checked every three hours and blood drawn for one thing or another once a day or so.  I went through three 1000ml IV bags of sugar water every day. I had chest x-rays and another cat scan on Wednesday that showed little change from the one I had on Monday.  They changed my antibiotics on Tuesday and they finally kicked in late on Wednesday and my fever went down and never returned.  My white blood cell count was also very high when I was first examined.  It was 20 and is supposed to be 10.  By late Wednesday early Thursday they had it back down to 10.  So I layed around in bed in my private room with the great view and watched the NCAA basketball games all day Thursday until Saturday when I was released.  Before they released me they installed what they called a pick line which is a more permanent IV line that is threaded from your bicep in your arm through the main artery with the line ending just before it enters your heart.  When they thread the line in they have a chest x-ray taken to make sure it is in the correct position.


I got released from the hospital at about 4:00pm Saturday after receiving my antibiotic treatment for the day.  The next day Sunday, which was earlier this morning, a home health care nurse came to our motorhome and taught Huli how to administer my antibiotics intravenously through my pick line.  Huli did fantastic.  The main thing is all about sterility and cleanliness and keeping the two pick lines flushed out with saline and heparin before and after administering the antibiotic.  We need to do daily doses until Thursday when I go to the infectious disease doctor who will remove the pick line so we can start home on Saturday.  I told them Friday but we now plan on leaving Saturday and plan on being home on Monday.

When we get home I will need to get a gastroenterologist to see what will need to be done going forward.  The doctors here don't want anybody doing anything to me for six weeks until my colon "cools" down.   My problems were many that got me into the hospital.  First, I thought I had food poisoning since I have never had diverticulitis ever before. I waited about a week and one half before going to the doctor.  I have never been one to run to the doctor or hospital when I get sick.  I usually kind of wait it out to see if I get better or if things get worse which normally takes a week or two.  My next problem was going to the Walk in Clinic even though I called the hospital and asked them where I should go since I did not have a primary physician in Fort Myers and this is where they referred me to.  ( Many nurses in the hospital said never go back there.  They said come straight to the emergency room.  I explained I didn't want to be one of the people you hear about on tv using the emergency room for every ailment that comes up and clogging the system up.  They said don't worry about it go straight to the emergency room the next time.)  My next problem was the Walk in Clinic prescribed me an oral antibiotic that was not right for the stage my illness was in.  On Wednesday when Janet called them telling them I was getting worse every time I took another dose of the medication they said stop taking it and come in next Monday for my appointment.  They should have had me come back in immediately but that is as much my fault for not insisting to get in asap rather than waiting another five days for my appointment.

On the bright side I have lost 23 pounds and haven't had any alcoholic beverages in over two weeks.  I jokingly told the doctors and nurses in the hospital that this probably contributed to me getting this god awful illness.  They laughed and assured me there was no correlation between the two.

For me personally 2014 really, really sucks.  I have was first layed up for my surgery for the first couple of months, secondly I was walking in front on the patio of our motor home bare footed and cut the bottom of my foot on two protruding broken off screws.   That had me hobbling around for about a week.  Then in March I get this.  I would like to have a do over for this first quarter.  Oh well, I look around and see many people who have real problems compared to my inconsequential ones.