When I started getting physical therapy I didn’t realize there were two kinds of therapy.

1. Physical Therapy
2. Occupational Therapy

Physical Therapy when they first started as I explained was very difficult. When you are trying to do something so simply as sitting up in bed can be debilitating. At first, I could not do it. I was actually screaming and grunting so badly I was embarrassed and mortified. I wasn’t until now I realized that the reason I had to have the ambulance called was because I fell and could not get up off the floor. That amazes me when I think about it now.

This therapy session was conducted with two people with straps attached to my waist when I was doing the simplest of tasks as sitting up. After a few sessions I was able to stand with some assistance and then take some steps. After a week or two I was walking down the hallway, rest and walk back. This was a tremendous feat, and I was very excited to tell Carrie about it. After a while the catheter was removed and was not physically connected to the monitors so I could move around as I needed, going to the bathroom etcetera. I liked this freedom, but I still had a fear.

Occupational Therapy was completely different. When the Occupational Therapist came in, I thought she was another physical therapist, a very pretty on at that. She explained that occupational therapists are there to help you adjust to regular home life. Going to the bathroom, taking a shower, getting in and out of the bathtub, all the everyday things you do in your life at home. She came in a few days to help with that and gave me some stretch bands to do some seated exercises, walking me through them a few times. I wish she had come earlier so I could have got used to some of that exercise, but she only came three times that I remember and only had me get in and out of the tub one time. That one time I actually did not get all the way in the tub because it was freezing cold, and my butt was hanging free in my gown.

After all the therapy I was getting I was feeling very good about my ability to get around and mentally getting ready for leaving the hospital and the trip home.

I mentioned I still had a fear. This was the 16 steps up to my apartment. After all the therapy I had I never had any exercise on the stairs.

I was moved to multiple rooms during my stay.

• Emergency Room
• MICU
• CICU
• Another Room (Don’t remember the area)
• General Population (sounds like prison)

Each of these areas had different levels of treatment with General Population the best. Even though the name sounds like prison.

After my first night which came with a lot of pain, needle poking, people walking in and out. Frustration with my oxygen mask. I could go on and on. My first nurse at night was Zane. He is also my first instance with a male nurse, the amount of care is the same male or female. It makes no difference. Although I can say male nurses know how to adjust thing’s concerning the male and anatomy. If you know what I mean, when the doctors came back the next day they started talking about my problems. I had sepsis, which is a serious condition where the body responds improperly to an infection, your infection fighting processes turn on the body itself, causing your organs to work improperly or poorly. The symptoms are not specific and can vary from person of person. I think mine came from the pneumonia I had when I first entered the hospital, this led to problems with my lungs, the kidneys, liver and just about every other organ in my body. During my stay, Carrie was always concerned about my cough and pneumonia, I was always concerned about my kidneys. They kept talking by dialysis and I did not want that in a nutshell.

The problems I was dealing with was pneumonia liver disease kidney failure and heart disease. Those are the problems I was facing. we’ll get more into the later state of my hospital on the next post.

Have a great day.

From dangling my legs, things kept getting better every day. The problem looking back, I was not going to the bathroom. I had the catheter, and I was peeing a lot. I was not having any bowel movements; I was not pooping. I never really thought about that. It wasn’t until I was transferred out of the ICU or MICU, which means medical ICU, that I started to poop. Problem with pooping; prior to me heading to the hospital, I had gained so much weight, I had thought, I could not wipe myself. I found this very embarrassing to this day and I never told Carrie about this. To qualify this, I did not gain so much weight as fat, I had retained so much water. Swelling me up, including my ball sack, scrotum. I had ratained so much water that even a friend of mine I met at spirit made a comment about how much weight I had gained.

Backing up a little, I was in MICU a few days. I was then moved into Cardio ICU. And I need to mention Scott. He was a nurse I had in MICU, and he was great. The most important thing is Carrie liked him as well.

Each day, I would be visited by multiple doctors, a team. They specialized in different fields, cardiology, renal, etc. They would all come in and ask questions of me. Look at the monitors. Mostly look at the monitors, let me know how things were going. If I wasn’t doing well sometimes, they would say nothing. Most of these doctors were great. Except for doctor Sanchez, he was an ass. I think it talked about him in an earlier post. He is also the one that told Carrie I was going to die. My family was told by someone, I don’t know who, but they told my family that I would not leave the hospital alive.

 Going back again, when I was in the hotel room trying to get help, I felt that I was going to die or close to it. When I was in the ambulance and heading to the emergency room, I no longer felt I was going to pass and was in good hands. I understand that was in bad shape, but I no longer felt in danger of dying. During my stay, I was moved into multiple rooms and had several nurses and nurse’s aides, the funny thing is the nurse’s aides did most of the work. they were all fantastic.

  This is all for the day, goodbye.

First, I forgot to post this after writing the title. Crap!!

Second, Kava is the best thing I have ever discovered!

I’ll edit this when I remember. This will be a place holder

After I had my catheter put in and after the spasms in my urinary tract had subsided, I was fairly comfortable. The doctors were spending most of their time coming in monitoring my heart rate, blood pressure, taking blood work every morning.

 After a couple of days I started eating, I don’t know why I wasn’t eating anything, I just wasn’t hungry, I think they were getting worried about that. Once I started eating one of the doctors commented, “you’ve got your appetite back” and that went on for a day or two with constant checkups which was just fine. I liked most of the doctors. Then the physical therapy started. Without warning they came in to start doing physical therapy and I was still weak as hell.

They were going to try and get me to sit up in bed. Just sit up, actually try and do that. I couldn’t do that. I was screaming and grunting so hard, and I was very, very loud. I was so weak, and I was so frustrated, and it hurt so bad. That’s right. I got some stuff done but not very much. They were finished and they left but they kept telling me “Good job” and I kept apologizing for the grunting and the screaming and everything that I was doing, and they said, “it’s okay” and I didn’t think it was okay. It’s like not for me. But anyways very next day they came back again, I was not expecting it. Was it not in a good mood. And I pretty much shewd them away, even told the nurses no. He told me it was going to be every other day and I’m not doing it today. The nurse said, “I heard him”, He said it would be every day and I know that was a fucking lie. I know that was a lie. Because did he never said that!

The nurse left and got the doctor, Dr. Sanchez. Ee came in and he was having a little conniption fit about me not doing the physical therapy and at the end he just screamed at me saying “This is on you!”, “This is on you!”. I said ok, I agree, It’s on me. I told everyone to come back tomorrow, and I’ll be ready, and he left. I never saw that fucking doctor again. Never came to my room again. But the next day physical therapy showed up and I was ready for them.

 I was ready, they wanted me to get up and dangle my legs. in my mind’s eye, I learned this a long time ago that whatever you can imagine in your brain doing and completing a task in doing. Your brain does not know the difference between you imagining you doing it and you physically actually doing it. Now your muscles know the difference. You can imagine all you want but your muscles will stay weak. But your brain doesn’t know the difference. The next day when the physical therapist showed up, I was ready for them.

 As soon as they said you want dangle your legs, I said let’s go for it. I had already done this hundreds of times in my mind literally probably hundreds of times when they got there. I did what I did in my brain. I kind of swung my legs up, moved them over. Sat up I use my momentum to help me sit up. I sat up and dangled my legs and it felt really good to do that. I was very proud of myself. Carrie showed up later on. I told her everything that had happened the day before and what I did that day. Carrie came every day except for maybe one when she was very tired.

I did that dangling and I was very proud, very happy. I told the physical therapist, “I told you I’d be ready today.”. she said yes, you did you did tell us that. I was a great day but I had a long way to go.

Yes, little pause in the medical stories.

This last week I made it a point to do my hourly walking ten times a day all week and 10 flights of stairs each day.

I completed that task including Saturday and Monday I started cardio therapy. This will last for 36 sessions and will help with my heart strength and losing weight!

Three weeks in a row! Getting back into the flow with other things as well and it feels very good.

After a few hours after my lab work came back, the head doctor in the emergency room sat down and told me everything that was wrong. That was a lot of stuff to handle. I had sepsis, liver disease, pneumonia and was in congestive heart failure. They gave me a bunch of meds right there in the emergency room. After a few hours they were able to get me to a room upstairs in the Medical Intensive Care Unit or MICU the first nurse I had there was Zane. He was a pretty cool dude!

When I woke up the next day Zane came in to introduce the next nurse, I don’t recall her name, but they had nurse changes at eight o’clock in the morning and seven or eight o’clock at night. However, after that first day I started receiving diuretic or pee medicine for a better word, which would make me urinate a lot and at the same time I had a catheter put in which was not easy because my scrotum was so swollen with water. Once that was put in, there was a lot of spasms and stuff with my urinary tract, which was very panful but eased up after about 8 hours. They had to fix some things that the first person had done incorrectly when placing the catheter. After that, the urine started flowing and everything was going fairly well. They started coming at me with medicine for pneumonia, blood pressure, heartrate and sepsis. They had very close monitoring of these items but there are other things that they didn’t do the hospital in Thomasville did which I’ll get to a little bit later.

Next: Eating, Physical Therapy and their communication with my family.