The Finale

I woke up the next morning in the Davis Hospital ICU with a mask on my face and various monitoring devices attached to my body. My blood pressure was still abysmal so they began pumping me full of fluids, which made me feel like a giant water balloon. Lots of people came to see me despite me telling them not too. (On this note, if I'm ever in the hospital again don't waste your time, seriously. If you want me to feel better go about your life so only I have to be stuck in a hellhole.) My surgeon came to see me and make sure my hip was doing fine. He really is a great surgeon, I never had to use crutches. Another one of my doctors dropped in and said, "What the hell are you doing in here?" The ICU was miserable, but the nurses liked me. According to one I was, "A lot easier to deal with and not as racist." After two or three days of not eating they finally forced me to. Overdosing on narcotics really kills your appetite. I was moved to telemetry for a bit then finally sent home. This time I walked out.

I've had a lot of time to think about this experience. I harbor a lot of resentment towards Davis Hospital, especially since they billed my parents for my time there. After coming home I began to hear multiple stories of people who had experienced what I went through, but most of them weren't as lucky. Here's a reminder for everyone to learn CPR and First Aid. My dad never thought he'd use it, but he was well trained and saved my life.

The moral of this story: Don't go to Davis Hospital. Ever. One of my friend's parents already lived by this and took him to McKay instead. Smart move. 

Dying and the art of making awkward things seem less awkward + bonus review

I'll call this part 3 of my epic tale. And at the end I'll review Ender's Game, so spoilers ahead.

Waking up in a strange place is weird, and it is even strange when you become conscious from being slid from an ambulance bed thing to an ER bed. I have bits of memory from this rough transition. The first noteworthy one is when I woke up in the actual ER room surrounded by people poking my hand. In fact, it was the pain that woke me up. I asked them to please stop poking me, and that got a laugh or two, then I passed out again.

The next was another pain-induced awakening. I looked down at the source and some guy was putting a catheter in. I said either "This is uncomfortable," or "This is uncomfortable for both of us." I just have to keep them laughing. The next memories are of begging for water. A bipac or whatever its called really dries out your throat. It is not pleasant.

The final awakening was in my ICU room. This is not a memory I like to recall. Talking is hard when you have oxygen constantly blowing in your throat. My dad was next to me and told me what happened. The strange thing is I knew I had died. I knew where I was, but I did not know the details. I lost control after he filled me in and the monitors started screaming at me, then I passed out again.

Now, on to something (only) slightly less depressing: Ender's Game. I have easily read this book more than 100 times, and I've studied it more than most study the bible. I even tried memorizing it once. Now that I have established my credentials here's what I thought of the movie.... Spoilers












Spoilers Ahead!





























Kay. I didn't like it. It was visually stunning but they changed too much of the actual story, some of it in the name of diversity (see Anderson and Dap), and some for no apparent reason. Bonzo was supposed to die dammit! There never was any sort of romance between Ender and Petra. Ever. Dragon started at #1 and stayed at #1, and they combined to battles into one which pissed me right off. I really hated the entirety of Battle School. It was too rushed and the butchered the Fantasy Game. Bean wasn't on his flight and Bernard didn't go to Command School with them. On that note, there wasn't enough of Dink of Hot Soup, and no Crazy Tom. I did enjoy the simulator, but that required ignoring the fact that they were all in the same room. Bah. Objectively it was a good movie, but because I have such an intimate relationship with the book I cannot separate the two. In the future I'll make a list of every detail they got wrong, if you want more on that then text me and I have a pretty decent list already. So now I have two reasons to hate Gavin Hood. Even though he didn't write Origins: Wolverine, I still blame him for the horrendous portrayal of Deadpool. 

How it all happened (AKA why you should never go to Davis Hospital)

Proper stories start from the beginning, but I didn't do that. This portion is about why I was at the hospital in the first place and how running led to my death.

For some silly reason I decided I wanted to get into better shape. So I started running at night after work, slowly making my way up to 2 miles a night. Over the course of this exercise my knees started to hurt, then my hips began producing an excruciating pain; it was to the point that I could not walk after my runs. After this happened 4 or 5 times I decided I should probably see a doctor. I went in to the appointment and the doctor told me my labrum was torn and I had a femoral acetubular impingement (fancy speak for a bone overgrowth on my hip and femur). First they injected steroids into my hips (cringing at the thought of this, imagine a six inch needle going into your hip, you can’t feel it going in, but you can feel it scraping against your bones) to see if that would help. Alas, it did not, and the next step was surgery.

Everything went well during the surgery. I didn't even have to use crutches. It was the post-op that did me in. My medical records show the RN in charge of giving me medicine completely disregarded what pain level I said I was at. I never said anything above a 6-7. The reason, the paper said, for giving me so much medication was a pain level I never claimed to be at (8-10). Recently a lawyer told me I was given double doses of some medication as well. I don’t remember much of the post-op  other than saying, when I was first asked, my pain level was 6-7, walking around, going to the bathroom, and the beginning of my wheelchair ride to my car.

The moral of this story: don’t exercise, you’ll die.

Next time: Dying and the art of making awkward things seem less awkward.