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.

After I got laid off on June 22nd, I took a couple of weeks off to relax and think about what was going on and that might have been a mistake. After that, I spent quite some time every day, looking for work as a contractor. After a few months, I started getting really depressed because I thought I would be able to find a job very quickly. That did not happen.

That is when I started drinking a lot and started to get very sick. I did not understand how sick I was getting until I found a job in Wichita, Kansas and Carrie and I headed out there for a flight. I was very weak and could hardly walk through the airport in Dallas. We had to take a ride on a motorized cart for handicap people and I’ve never had to do that before.

After we got into Wichita, we found our hotel. it was a pretty run-down mess of a hotel. We stayed there a few days until Carrie in her driving around while I was at work found a Hampton Inn in Dery, Kansas, which was very nice. they gave us a discount for me working at Spirit Aerosystems.

At this time, I was still drinking a lot. I was still getting weaker, weaker and weaker. I went to work and was able to get my Id. My badge and everything taking care of for starting work. And ended up starting work in one building. But then a couple days later, I had to transfer to another building, which is actually much better than where I was, and it took me a long time to walk over there because I had to keep stopping because I was so weak.

After a few days at the new building, I had to start a class for SAP which I know like the back of my hand but had been two years since I used it at Spirit. I had to go through a two-week class, which was very nice. It was very fun, and I enjoyed it, but getting to work and coming home was an ordeal every day, I ended up missing the last day of class because I was so sick.

I’m going to fast forward a couple of days because I was in the hotel, just sitting around ordering food, not eating the food. It started rotting in the refrigerator. It was a horrible mess. at one point in time, I had ordered something from a restaurant. it was a milkshake; I believe spilled all over the floor. I just left it lying there because I could not get the energy up to clean it up. Carrie kept calling and kept getting very, very worried about me. I kept ignoring her. Ignored my sisters until a point in time came that I was watching TV in the morning. I stood up to lay down in bed.

  I fell down. I was too weak, to even get up at this point in time is when I thought I was going to die. There were a couple times where I made appointments to urgent care. I didn’t go because I was too weak to walk downstairs to get a lift to go to the urgent care. But on that day, when I fell down and I could not get up like I said, I thought that I was going to die right there. I started screaming for help and nobody could hear me. That is when I got very scared. I was not able to get the phone to work.   when I finally did get it to work, i called the front desk. they did not answer the phone and when I hit the button for reservations, then they answered the phone. I was able to tell her what was going on that I was on the floor. I was naked. A very big man. They need to get some big people up to help me. She got on the phone right away and called 911. They came in and picked me up within probably fifteen or twenty minutes. Then I headed off to the hospital.

After I arrived at the hospital, I will have to add this that the ambulance EMT’s were absolutely wonderful. They were great. Asked me where I wanted to go. Said I wanted to go to the best hospital around and they took me directly there. After I got to the hospital, that’s a different story because I hear different things. I was told by Carrie that I was I was delirious. When I got to the hospital, I was not delirious. Everything very, very clearly. I do not think I was delirious, I told them my name, told them my birth date. All of them where I had told them what day it was. I don’t know why they said I was delirious.

 But then the nurse came in and told me that Carrie was flying down from the Seattle. I was not supposed to know that. I didn’t know I was not supposed to know until the next day. When Carrie got there, I was not to know that and I really appreciated that very much.

It is now time to give an explanation as to why I have been gone for over a year.

A short version starts with me being laid off from Pursuit Aerospace. on June 22, 2023. How that went down I have already talked about.

I took a couple of weeks off after being laid off to just relax and take a look at my life and where I wanted to go or do for the next year until I retired. What I did not know is my health already started going downhill. I became depressed. I drank more than I should have and ended up in the hospital in Wichita, Kansas and spent a few weeks there. Carrie and I drove back to Thomasville, GA and I then spent time alone at the apartment. I drank a little bit more. I did not have my medications because I did not have insurance. My health started to spiral down again. I ended up in the hospital for another three weeks beginning May 25. I am out now and I’m doing well. Today is August 19^th, , 2024.

That concludes the short version. For the next couple of weeks, I will be detailing out what happened during the last year.

Some of the others in the class were dumb as a box of rocks making this first week unfinished and will be finished on Monday, today.

Very frustrating.