I’ve been home for about half a week; in the beginning it was at once exciting, relieving, and frightening. Exciting and relieving for obvious reasons. Frightening because I was leaving the close attention of nurses and doctors that the hospital provided.
The last few days have eliminated that fright.
In the hospital, and early this week, I was noticing that I had trouble reading things from certain distances. I bumped the resolution on my monitor so things would be larger, and they were still fuzzy unless I was up close. My mom brought along a pair of cheap reading glasses and those helped clear things up.
Now I don’t need them anymore. They make things fuzzier. I still haven’t changed my monitor’s resolution back, but I can read the screen again. Victory!
My feet and legs still do the strange thing where they like to tense up. I feel like it’s been improving, but it’s still around. It will be easier to mark progress when it disappears entirely.
In the hospital, near the middle of my stay, I was able to write and commit some code on an open-source authentication module for the Kohana framework. Shortly after that, I lost the concentration to continue doing programming work (or much anything else) on the computer. This week, I’ve been building the amount of code I write each day; some of it even contributing to work projects. That’s right, I’ve even been doing work on my first week home. Victory again!
My conclusion is that most of my recovery requires having left the hospital. I don’t know how much of this progress I would have made so soon if I hadn’t been so adamant about getting discharged on Sunday.
My energy level is still low, but I set a few records on some of the Wii Fit balance games today. More victory! A little bit more exercise every day should build how far I can walk. The only annoying thing right now is that I banged up my toe nail (large one on the left foot) while I was in the hospital. It’s been getting wrapped up with gauze and antibiotic ointment, and barely fits in a sock. Definitely not in a shoe. So any walking that I’ve been doing has been in socks and sandals, the size of which make walking more like shuffling. Once my toenail figures out if it’s staying or going, my walking distance should greatly improve.
Also very important: I have been sleeping so much better at home than I was in the hospital. In the hospital I would be lucky to get an hour or two at a time, and then lay awake for an hour or two. Here I’ve been able to go three or four hours before waking up for a position change. It can’t hurt that there isn’t someone coming in approximately every four hours to check my blood pressure and temperature. Sleeping in my own bed, with my own charming wife, has made a drastic and victorious improvement in my sleeping habits.
Conclusion: being home is wonderful. Hospitals are helpful with their high-level of attention and care, but the independence of home lets you really start to heal.
Posted in: Diagnostic Phase | Tags: coding, energy level, exercise, eyesight, home, hospital, sleep, work
Did I mention the light-headedness? For the last month there have been occasional episodes where I’ll stand from a sitting position, and after thirty-seconds find myself light-headed and dizzy. The sensation would last for up to a minute or two, and was really quite debilitating in the wrong moment.
We were pretty sure they weren’t hydration-related, as we thought ourselves to be perfectly capable monitors of that sort of thing. As faced my SCCA doctors about it, and they pointed out that just about any scan that would have indicated something was wrong is already a scan I’ve had recently. Seeing our level of consider, and considering the possibility to having these dizzy spells might complicate the upcoming busy weeks, they decided to move he whole circus inpatient.
And so, a few days ago, I checked-in to the UWMC. I’ve been getting total-body irradiation twice daily, and napping during just about every other waking second. It’s amazing how tiring is it to get your entire body irradiated! And I’m now taking a huge regimen of pills (“to protect against viral infections”, “to protect against bacteria”, “to protect against vorpal swords”) that keep me safe from many common bad guys.
I’ll write in more detail about more of this at more of a later time. I’m tired now, and I think I want to nap before dinner arrives!
[edited 03/22 for wording and clarity]
Posted in: Treatment Phase | Tags: dehydration, dizziness, exhaustion, hospital, inpatient, light-headed, medications, napping, scca, tbi, total-body irradiation, uwmc, vorpal sword