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Nov 12, 2008 - 05:27 PM |
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Sweet Release |
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After nearly three weeks enduring various levels of institutionalized torture, the doctors agree that I'm well enough to leave the hospital today. I don't get to go home to New York, I have to stay at one of the associated community homes. If you know what a Ronald McDonald House is, then you have a firm grasp of where I'll be - minus the deranged mascots. I pay $10 a night, clean up after myself and supply most of my own food. I have no idea where to get this food but we'll see. I've saved up a small supply of pudding cups and Rice Krispies Treats from the nightly dessert cart. I expect those can tide me over until I locate whatever suffices for a supermarket in this city.
I've been told that three weeks is an extraordinary recovery time for a double-lung transplant, that most patients stay in the hospital for nearly a month, often more. I have to take their word at face value, as there's no comparable experience for me to draw upon. They insist that I feel fantastic, which may be true, in relative terms. I am still achy, stiff and easily tired - I had my entire torso mauled - so I am maintaining a conservative assessment of my condition. In time it will improve, I'm sure. Right now, I just want my ribcage to stop throbbing.
Likewise, they don't expect that I'll need to undergo local observation for long, maybe another three weeks. I have to go to a handful of clinic appointments and be seen by homecare nurses at the halfway house several times a week. Other than that, I'm a temporary citizen of Pittsburgh, free to travel wherever I like, whenever I feel up to it. I don't know the city well, and although my dad is coming down in my car, I'm not allowed to drive - nobody is immediately following chest surgery. I'd like to see what entertainment Pittsburgh has to offer but I don't want to overexhaust myself in the process.
I learned something about you healthy people. When you fully inhale, the breath doesn't expand your ribcage nearly as much as a person with diseased lungs does. It's a process called hyperinflation, evidently; the lungs, in their need to direct the same volume of air within a compromised space, adapt by expanding deeper within the chest cavity. Over time, the lungs themselves become enlarged, causing the owner to feel a breath drawn in as deep as the tops of the kidneys. Now that my lungs are healthy, there's no need to expand so much. Comparitively, my breathing feels shallow, even though it's not. As I work the lungs and they settle into my own chest, this tightness will completely disappear. For now, even though I'm much healthier than before, I still sound a bit like Stevie from "Malcolm in the Middle." It's like I have to learn to breathe all over again.
On the plus side, all those whacked-out side effects have largely ceased. I'm no longer hallucinating, no longer experiencing involuntary twitches that prevent me from sleeping. The tinnitus has cleared up and food tastes correct once more. All that remains is a slight oversensitivity to bright light and some swelling in the feet, which will both clear up now that the intravenous medicine has run its course.
I don't know what the internet status at this "Family House" will be. I might be sporadic in my attendance. I might just lay in bed for a couple days and enjoy a relatively interruption-free existence. Being free of all the tubes, wires, catheters and sensors is in itself a blissful state. I am untethered. You don't appreciate freedom until it is suddenly revoked. I signed up for this brutality, true, but it wasn't exactly mentioned in the brochures, so to speak.
Anyhow, I'm just relieved to be leaving this hospital. As much as I've griped about some of the stuff I've dealt with back home, the UPMC makes Buffalo look like the Hilton.
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