more than you want to know...really....

Someone emailed and asked why I've been neglecting my web.

The truth is, the last week has been a blur of pain, discomfort and narcotic relief.

The faint of heart should stop reading now!!!

Last Wed, unbeknownst to me, the urinary tract infection I didn't know I had blocked my (how to put this politely?) well...urinary tract.

Bern took me to the hospital where they discovered the infection and put in a Foley tube to relieve me. The tube didn't work and by the time we drove back home I told Bern I needed to go back.

It was on the second visit that I heard six of the most terrifying words I've ever heard: "You need a larger tube...." After misadventures galore, it was finally in place and we came home about 2 am.

By 5:30 I called an ambulance. I wasn't coming home this time until they fixed it. After about 35 minutes of savagery, they finally gave me an IV and a shot of some of the nicest stuff I've ever met and decided to wait for the urologist on call.

I got another IV hit of that wonderful stuff (I'm glad I don't remember what it was since I would probably be tempted to steal some) before the urologist arrived. He looked for all the world like Kurt Vonnegut and put in a tube with three separate openings in the end with a simple twist. I told him he was good at it and he said, "I do this for a living, afterall."

He sent me to the floor and they hung two bags about 3 liters each above my bed and started them running inwards to where liquid usually doesn't come from in that direction. So the rest of Thursday and Thursday night I absorbed enough saline to flood the lowlands and got several pills that we're as good as the injected stuff but good enough. The nurses on the floor were amazing--Florence Nightengales on each shift--but the urologist who came to check me out Friday afternoon (Kurt Vonnegut having left for the weekend) decided not to remove the tubes until after the weekend to give the antibiotics time to do their wonders.

I tried to protest but all he had to say is, "If I take it out now and you don't do well you have to come back through the ER."

Come Monday the infernal internal plumbing was removed and after nearly blacking out the first time two times I did what the tube had been doing, it settled down a bit. They had given me Oxycontin to take home. (I call it "hillbilly heroine" since people in Appalachia crush their grandmother's prescription up and inject it--a real problem in the mountains.)

All was almost well.

(I once visited a sometimes member of the parish in the hospital after surgery and asked when he could go home. "As soon as Mr. Poopy comes" he told me.

An elderly, distinguished man, waiting for 'Mr. Poopy". Which I had to do until today....)

Well, I warned you to stop but there you have it--why I haven't been writing on my blog....Just in case you wondered....