Adventure Overview

I've been out of the hospital for a week and a day now, so I guess it's about time I got some blogging done! I've been planning it out in my head for quite a while now, but I've just been too dang tired to do anything about it. So here goes!

Tianna and Kyle have already blogged about this, so I'm gonna let their posts cover the general storyline. Tianna didn't blog 'til I got home, so she has one huge post you can read. Or, for more of a play-by-play, you can see Kyle's posts for 1/13, 1/15, 1/16, 1/17, 1/21, 1/24, and 1/26 (poor guy was spending all his time at the hospital with me, so the posts get signigicantly shorter as he got more and more exhausted). So that should cover the basic storyline, and I figured I'd just add my personal thoughts and reflections on the whole thing, rather than retelling exactly what has already been told twice.

I started just writing out all the stuff I wanted to say, but it got really long really fast. So I've decided to break it up into several posts, just to make life simpler. So this first post is just an overview. I'll add my thoughts in upcoming posts. But first...

...A Quick Summary:

• 1/3 (Sat.): got a sore throat
• 1/6 (Tues.): went to Urgent Care, where they verified that it wasn't strep and sent me home
• 1/12 (Mon.): went back to Urgent Care, had a CT done, and was eventually admitted at UVRMC for emergency surgery to drain an abscess in my neck
• 1/13 (Tues.): got out of ICU
• 1/15 (Thurs.): had a second emergency surgery b/c the infection had spread into my chest cavity (yes, instead of going to the symphony!)
• 1/20 (Tues.): got out of ICU again
• 1/26 (Mon.): came home, after exactly 2 weeks in the hospital

Inventory, after the second surgery:

• 3 drainage tubes in my neck, one in my left side, and 3 in my right side
  
• a tube down my mouth for the ventilator and another tube up my nose and down into my stomach (for the record, I don't recommend either of these; they were miserable)
• a catheter
• a central line (the creation of which felt like they were grinding something into my collarbone—not fun) (a couple of days later, they took out the central line and added a PICC line instead)
• 2 IV's (one in my arm and one in my wrist), which were hooked up to all kinds of things
• a telemetry device of some kind (a box attached to several (6?) stickies all over me to track my heart rate and such)
• (if I was braver, I'd post a picture; the number of tubes and wires and machines is quite impressive) [Edit: I gave in to peer pressure and created this post.]
  

Now that I'm home and healing, I have:

• 2 incisions on my neck, each about 2.5" long (I'm accepting submissions for the awesomest explanation! my current favs are a saber-tooth tiger attack and/or a voice transplant)
• 4 holes from chest tubes, 1 on the left and 3 on the right
• 1 incision on my left back, about 1.5", from the VATS
• 1 incision on my right back, a good 6" long, from the thoracotomy (this is the one that really hurts!)
• a giant numb patch on my right ribcage, about 6" wide (from my sternum to my side) and 4" tall