The Crash and The Journey Back

I have some very good friends.  Amy K. and Sunny K. were my coworkers in the AR Dept at CRMH.  We had an absolute blast in that department.  I truly miss them!    Amy had come to see me early in my stay and brought a bag of my favorite snacks along with a gift card for my parents.  Sunny finished up her nursing shift one night then came and sat with me a while.  The 2nd night Sunny and Eric (her husband also a nurse) came by to visit I was asleep so I awoke to find Kermit and a balloon.  Kermit has become a daily part of my life.  If you've seen my Facebook page, you've seen it.  The balloon became the "blocker" for the unit of blood that I would get on Friday. The downfall of two major orthopedic surgeries in the span of three weeks plus blood thinners and blood loss in the OR was causing me to become anemic.  My H&H (red blood cell count) kept trending downward.  As a result I was feeling pretty poorly.  Friday m...

If you’ve ever been in the hospital for an ortho issue or know anything about some hospital admissions, there are certain things besides going to the potty you have to do in order to get out. It’s like working parole. So my first attempts at physical therapy were miserable failures. I was taught how to do butt crunches (yea it’s a real thing), straight leg raises (really relatively speaking), heel slides (sure can’t bend my knee but if you say so) and I think there was one more but I can’t remember. My first attempt to get out of bed and walk was met with lightheaded and decreased BP. My second attempt was a rapid response. Third time was the charm. Hands on walker, right foot on the floor let’s go. Man that was hard, but getting out of that room was nice. Now I could see the hallway and the elevators/exits. I would soon be liberated from BMH. The therapist and her student were fantastic. The walker had wheels on the front, and the back walker feet sliding on the floor made a ma...