I keep thinking about how I feel like I slammed into a wall—and I kind of did, it's just that the wall was horizontal.
My biggest fear right now is catching a cold, or at least a cough. I can't handle having a cough right now, it would be very painful. I finally tried to allow myself to sneeze once yesterday, and the muscle contractions involved caused a sharp and intense pain in the one spot on the left side of my back that feels particularly bruised—although, curiously, my body has yet to develop any visible bruising to speak of. I really thought I was going to be black and blue, but not so far. Anyway, I sneezed and it was painful enough for me to yell out in pain a bit. I was in the primary bathroom and Shobhit heard me from the living room and said, "Are you okay?" I said I was.
I was discharged from the hospital yesterday at around 12:20. This means I was in one hospital or another for a pretty solid 48 hours. I've got to say I don't recommend it. I keep thinking of new ways I'll be careful when riding my bike. Not that I'll be riding my bike soon. Six weeks the doctor who spoke to me last yesterday said, no riding my bike. Specifically
no activities that result in contact or collision. The doctor basically said this but the very thorough discharge instructions listed a ton of "contact sports" I should avoid, and bicycling was on the list. Also included, among many others, were baseball, jumping, horseback riding, ice hockey, skiing, kayaking, martial arts, rugby, rodeo—this list cracks me up, as did the multiple times I was told yesterday to avoid "contact sports" for six weeks. As if I play contact sports! Ha! Well, except that a couple of things I actually do
are on the list, including my favorite one, cycling.
Because I have been doing push-ups every other day for 14 years, Shobhit asked the nurse going over all this in our discharge paperwork if I should do push-ups. The nurse said, "No. Don't do that!"
I had already gotten a visit by a doctor (I think) from the surgical team, or whatever phrase she used that I can't completely remember—I truly had countless hospital staff talk to me over the past couple of days—who went over a lot of this with me verbally. She was the first one to tell me to avoid contact sports. I don't know if it was her or someone else who wrote up my discharge paperwork with all this plus next steps and a ton of other stuff, but the final nurse to go over it all, with both Shobhit and me, was so impressed with how thorough it was that she was convinced it was not written by a straight-up doctor. "Maybe it was a physician's assistant," she said. She also admitted, though, that people are usually discharged from the regular hospital; this was the ICU which they never transferred me out of (even though they did downgrade my care after one day), and she said discharges don't typically happen straight out of the ICU, and this was maybe only the second one she had done.
I was taken out of the hospital pushed on a wheelchair. There is often some level of derision aimed at this common practice, because often when people are discharged it feels like there is no need for a chair. Well, often there
is, and boy am I glad I got one—and not just because one of the most gorgeous young men I have ever seen, Jackson, was assigned to push me out. Holy christ, that guy could push me anywhere he wants. Okay well, in a chair I mean.
Anyway, Harborview is a gigantic medical center on a sprawling campus with a bunch of buildings, and the route from the ICU to the discharge pharmacy, while probably simple once you get the lay of the land, feels labyrinthine if you're not already familiar. I was in no state to figure out where the hell it was so I was really glad to get pushed there. I was offered prescriptions for two of the more intense pain killers (methocarbomol and oxycodone), which I actually have zero intention of taking; I just decided it couldn't hurt to have, just in case I have some kind of intense pain flareup. I learned at the hospital that I should accept whatever pain management options there are. I also picked up a bottle of extra strength Tylenol, and that I've been taking regularly as directed, two tablets every six hours. I do still have pain, I'm incredibly sore, and I have to move in certain ways—get up, bend over, walk—slowly and very carefully.
It didn't take me long to get my prescriptions, and because Tylenol and MiraLax are over-the-counter I was given the option of just buying those somewhere else or buying them here. I still have MiraLax I used to give the cats at home, so I declined that. I may need to use more of it, though; I put some in my chai last night and it hasn't made much of a difference. I had a BM last maybe an hour after the accident on Tuesday; it's three days later now and I haven't had one since. I'm kind of afraid of having a huge one that is too much of a strain; I know I'll need to be careful about bearing down. In any case, once I was given the go-ahead to eat solid food after about 24 hours, I've had several quite significant meals. And with no BM in the meantime, I feel
really bloated. I'm sure that's the biggest reason why, but I wonder if the residual blood still in my abdomen, which i was told would take one to two weeks to be fully reabsorbed, is also a factor. That's certainly a big part of the pain I still feel, as it was explained to me that the body recognizes this as something weird and wrong going on.
Shobhit had joked that I might lose a few pounds as a result of being forced to fast for 24 hours. Well, after eating several means with no BM in the meantime, I weighed in this morning at 174.3 lbs. That's more than I've weighed in ages. I'm just hoping once I expel what seems to be stuck in me that it'll start to be mitigated. I may need to increase my dose of laxative. I was told some of the pain medications cause constipation, and I was given both MiraLax and a stool softener while in the hospital, but still, nothing.
I seemed to walk out the wrong side of the hospital when I took my meds and went outside. I found
a rather nice common area where it looks like people take their lunch, in front of the west-facing side of Harborview's very old (built 1931) Center Tower. It's at an elevated level above what otherwise would be 8th Avenue, and I had to walk around to 9th to where Shobhit could easily pick me up, as he had walked home to pick up the car and come back and get me. The doctors wanted me walking anyway, and I was slow but it was fine.
We drove home, and I rested. I even lay on the bed for a while. Shobhit read his library copy of
Heated Rivalry while lying next to me. I even napped for a bit, but that stopped when Shobhit went to grab a bag of corn snack I had as a sample from work and chomped on it while next to me. I swear it's his life's mission to eat loudly while right next to me.
We later went out again. I'll be working from home next week, and I needed to get my work laptop, keyboard, mouse, and earpiece. I needed to be there so we can be sure we got everything I needed. He found a parking spot right across the street from the entrance, and I was somewhat surprised to see that, now well after 7:00, the garage entrance–the one my bike accident was right in front of—was still open.
We went in through the revolving-door entrance, though, and found a security guy at a small desk. Shobhit was deeply interested in inquiring about what security footage they might have of the accident, especially since the security people I spoke to on Tuesday had said they would probably have footage of it. This guy directed us to the main desk up in the 2nd floor lobby, beneath the 400 University building (the smallest of the three major buildings on this block). There we found a young man who was very accommodating and helpful, and even found the footage for us to see. He even told us, "I'm aware of that incident."
He said it might take a few minutes though, so we went down to the PCC office to get my stuff in the meantime. By the time we got back, the guy had the footage all queued to play for us.
Shobhit asked if it would be triggering for me to see the footage, and I said I didn't know but probably not. In the end it hardly mattered: none of their security cameras, it turns out, where in a spot to get a direct line of sight to what happened. The best angle was from a camera mounted on the other side of the garage where the truck had pulled out. You can see the truck inch out slowly at first, then speed up a little, which was right when I saw it—and you can see part of my bike's wheel when I crashed, falling short of actually hitting the truck. From this angle, though, it very much looks like I hit the truck, but I didn't. You can see the driver get out of the truck and walk around the back of it to come to my assistance, but you can't see him or me for the rest of the video footage, at least not until another camera shows me riding the bike down the garage ramp to lock it up. The bike is still there, thankfully; we asked the dock supervisor and he said they would not do anything with a bike no one took away for at least 30 days. I'll have the bike home within that time for sure, although I'm still not exactly sure how I'm going to do that as I can't ride it. Shobhit and I may take the bus down there sometime and then just bring it back on the bus.
Gabriel called me before I left the hospital yesterday and we chatted for a bit while he was driving somewhere for work. He can't believe I got back on the bike after the accident, even if just to go down the ramp to the bike rack. Well, I was stupidly convinced at the time that I was okay, even though I also wasn't truly certain. Plus I guess I wasn't in my right mind, I suppose. It only occurred to me just now that maybe it would have been a better idea to
walk the bike down that ramp.
I have been thinking more since last night about the risks associated with my recovery, which involves avoiding any impact that might dislodge blood clots on my injured organs (liver and spleen). As Gabriel put it, "If I fall right now, I'll be fine. If you fall right now, you're fucked." On our way back from Rainier Square last night, we stopped at QFC, where we walked as slowly as I needed. We parked in the parking garage as usual though, where we found
both elevators out of service. Shobhit was going to go out and walk around, but I said I could take the stairs. I held onto the railings, it was fine. But then we still had to go out onto the sidewalk on Broadway to come back into QFC through the main entrance, where a group of mentally unstable people and drug users had gathered, and one was walking around with sudden, erratic movements. I kind of thought: what if someone like that just up and punched me in the gut right now? Thankfully the likelihood of such a thing is very low. Nobody bothered me.
Anyway, we came home and watched this week's episodes of
Half Man and
Hacks on HBO Max, the finales in both cases. I was in bed soon after. This was my first night back in my own bed in three nights, and I tried to fall asleep on my right side as usual but couldn't do it. When I woke up a couple of times I found I had been sleeping on my side after all, so that seems like progress. I absolutely had to sleep only on my back while I was in the hospital. In other words, recovery is slow going, but it's going.
This just in! I managed a BM in the middle of writing the last few paragraphs. (I took a break from writing to do it.) I had really hoped I would expel, like, 5 lbs, but no such luck. It was just a regular, average BM, albeit the most careful I've ever been about one. Still, from a medical perspective, good news!
One final thing, about work: I set up my work station last night and logged in; I'm having trouble with the remote desktop but I'm sure IT can help me with that. I finally set my out of office to say I'm out until Monday, but I think I'll still work an hour or two today, just so I can feel better about my plan to submit PTO that I worked half a day on Tuesday. I'd kind of like to manage some of my unattended emails before Friday anyway.
[posted 8:01am]
