Reasonable Health (part 7)

Some interesting things happened after being released from the hospital.  However in an effort to keep the mundane separate for the more interesting, I will quickly review the mundane first.

My life at home centered around the tubes that ran into and out of my body.  To maintain these tubes, an infusion nurse was sent (within an hour of leaving the hospital) to teach me how to do my own IV infusion.  She was a very competent and friendly woman who made me feel comfortable with the following routine:

1. Wash hands.
2. Dry hands with clean paper towel.
3. Open alcohol wipe.
4. Clean port going into my arm with wipe.
5. Open Saline Syringe and squeeze out any air pockets.
6. Attach saline syringe to port.
7. Open IV locks.
8. Slowly pump syringe till all saline flushed into IV port.
9. Open Antibiotic Eclipse ball.  
10. Remove saline syringe and attach Eclipse ball to IV port (do not allow any tips to touch anything)
11. Open Eclipse ball and allow to run till empty (approximately 1 hour)
12. When empty, detach Eclipse ball from line and attach fresh saline syringe.
13. Slowly pump syringe till all saline flushed into IV port.
14. Open Heparin syringe and remove saline syringe.
15. Attach Heparin syringe and pump into IV line. 
16. Close IV locks.
17. Remove Heparin syringe and wait about 5 hours to do this all over again.

The drain was also a regular part of my existence, but in a much different way.  There is a tube that runs from the abscess inside my liver, out through my mid-right back.  At that point, a larger tube is attached which is about 20" long that runs to a 10" bag that I can pin to my paint leg or the end of my shirt tail.  The doctors made it very clear that this bag was to NEVER be higher that the drain coming out of my back because all the nasty stuff that was collecting in the bag could end up running back to into my liver.  As you might imagine, this kept me very aware of what this bag was doing all the time.  Lying flat on the bed meant that the bag had to hang off the side of the bed to be lower than my back.  But all this is nothing compared to the amazing level of pain derived from this little drain tube.  I found that if I leaned against the drain area (sat or laid against my back) I would experience intense, painful back spasms in very short order.  If I laid on either side or on my belly, the spasms would take slightly longer to start, but would be just as intense.

How intense?  Without a bit of exaggeration, I would like you to imagine someone with a 10" ice pick with a 240 volt power line attached to that ice pick.  Out of the blue, they deeply stab you with that ice pick.  You get the stabbing feeling with the severe electric shock at the same time.  I can tell you right now that when this happens, it is very difficult to experience the wind being completely knocked from your body without adding an expletive to the last bit of air forced from your lungs.  From there, it would often take hours for me to be able to loosen up my breathing muscles enough to get a half of a breath.  And trying to get a larger breath, trying to loosen up by stretching, trying to sit comfortably, trying to do practically anything but stand still would invite the fellow with the electric ice pick to do his level best to knock any air that you possess in your lungs completely from your body again.  At night, I would take some Motrin to help dull the pain, but it really did not help much.

Everyday, a wonderful nurse would travel to my house to flush saline into my liver and to empty the bag that was collecting fluids.  Amazingly, the act of flushing saline into the liver did not cause pain.  It did feel sort of creepy, like someone was gently moving around one of your organs.

So this was the mundane, daily routine of my existence at home.  But things were about to get much more interesting.  Before I had gotten sick, Sara and I decided to change for a Personal Choice health plan to a Keystone HMO plan to help save money for Jame's college.  The change over date for the health plans was November 1st, the day I was to go back to the hospital to get a CAT scan of the abscess and see how it was progressing.  As you might imagine, the change between health plans was anything but smooth.