OK, I Surrender

I had planned on seeing my niece Anna for her graduation party in Columbia City. She's off to college in the Fall, the 2nd of our family to go for a Bachelors. You already know the first.

My hometown is a rather boring three hour drive away, and Charles and I planned to go, visit and return, so that he'd not miss work on Sunday and I'd not have to stay away from home, where I know how everything is laid out, where it is, what to do with it. Love my family as I do, I do think I would never stay with them. There's something I like about not knowing some things; whose bathroom is filthiest? whose guest room is an inflatable on the floor;

I knew given the 6 hour round trip in the car that I would need to feel as close to perfect as possible. I didn't wake that way. I woke at 4pm on a coughing binge that proceded until the early afternoon. I had progressively more difficult breathing--but, believe or not, these things have happened before. I didn't see how badly it would go.

It became obvious by mid afternoon that this was not ordinary coughing jag, and Charles started asking me if I wanted to go to the hospital. Given the seriousness and hatred with which I view  any trip to the ER, I waited to flip the switch; this had happened before and resolved itself before.

Finally around 6:30pm I could see my old failsafes had done the previous and eschewed the latter. We went to the ER where I was stabilized and they began to unravel the puzzle. That's how, when I was done, I went from citizen to indentured servant of pneumonia.

No illness that I know of is fun to have, but pneumonia scrapes the bottom of the barrel. Raging fever, , terroristic acts of diarrhea, strange sadism for watermelon.

That's how, last Friday, I was sent to serve my sentence in Bloomington Hospital, where I am right now. How much longer we all ask? I don't know. I can breathe, but the pneumonia that chose me
is MRSA pneumonia, and no one wants one of that walking around.

I've been on scads of medicines as they try to figure out the angle by which to fight this, and I am pretty rough geography for virtually any fight right now.

I spent my first four days in the Progressive Care Unit, which sounds like a great idea, but nothing that happened to me there merits either Progressive or Care in their titles. The room was cramped, and semi private. My roommate was an old man who, when not shitting the bed, was having alzheimer's inspired conversations with the fairy world he lives in. I felt sorry for him, but desperately wanted sleep.

Sleep, though, seems to be the last thing anyone wants.

I want to know:  Did you know they wake you at five to weigh you?  YES, weigh you. No other reason. They cycle through every four hours,  taking the same set of vitals, feeling the same pulse, and his doesn't feel like care--it feels like harassment. As if you were too butt-ass stupid to tell them that you felt something had changed. Then there's the random stuff that happens at night--the crash of something dropped,  A hospital is the worst, and the dirtiest, place to sleep.

But with MRSA? Private room. Isolation. Works for me.

I don't know when I will be released. I feel better, but not whole. I am tired and awkward, and a bit defeated. I miss my dog, my bed, knowing where everything is, coffee, the porch, my rocking chair and a good deal more

I'd say more about the general poverty of this experience, particularly the hospital, but I realize it does nothing to overmoan. Suffice it to say that as healthcare and medicine continue to generate big profits, administrators will--in order to protect profits--encultureate reactive models of service that while touting customer committment, will only make up wonder whose ass they stuck their head in.

If you sent me a facebook message of late, I may not have answered. I just honestly felt that badly, about as much as I do of poor etiquete.  Thank you, hope to see you soon.