The rest of the hospital story.

If you'd told me on Sunday morning, when I was in crushing pain in the ER, that I'd be relaxing in a private room watching America's finest network program on Sunday night, I might have thought that it was some weird, unattainable dream. But indeed that was the case.

The hideous pain I'd suffered didn't return, but I was terrified that it would. However, I slept and napped pretty well, for a guy who was getting an IV bag (they feared bone infection initially) and vitals checked every few hours. Ultimately on Monday they chose a course of action, and that was the epidural steroid shots commonly used in my situation. They had had to hold off until they decided bone infection was not likely, because steroids' immunosuppressant characteristics would make an infection worse. Monday afternoon I was whisked away for the job, and that was awfully painful, because I had to lay on my stomach. This stretched out the nerves, and the doctor doing the procedure said in cases like mine it could bring that pain right back. But there was no choice. However, the nurse was able to slip some fentanyl in my IV plug, which made me dizzy but eased the agony.

And that was the last painkiller I got. I had to stay over another night for observation, and then all day Tuesday while endless paperwork was processed, but I haven't had so much as an aspirin since. I don’t want to mask a return of crisis signals.

I'm grateful to the hospital for getting me some treatment. Complain as I have over the last couple of blog entries, I can't imagine what people did with these kind of issues in the past. Whiskey, I guess. What else did they have?

And every person on staff was shockingly nice. The grumpy nurse, the overworked resident, the empty-headed intern, not one of these caricatures appeared in my reckoning. They were all great.

Yes, the food was exceptionally bland, but it was prompt and generous. I thought the bed was comfy enough, considering that I had to sleep on my back for the duration. One nurse sympathized, having heard complaints from patients about the beds; another said she'd been a patient and had hated the bed. But I thought it was fine.

Seems like a comfy spot to me

And when the time came to leave, the duty nurse was organized and efficient. I was offered a wheelchair but refused. I was going to have to start walking on my own again anyway.

Now what? Well, I was told to see four different doctors, including my own GP, who is finally returning to action after being missing for months. (I suspect he was on a three-hour tour near Hawaii when the weather started getting rough.) I can't walk very far without the leg hurting, so my wife still has to tend to the dogs all by herself. 😞 And I can't lift anything heavy. There's also some question in the discharge papers as to whether I should be allowed to drive. So clearly there's a path before me to traverse back to health.

But I'll say this: On Tuesday night, when I went to bed, I was bone-terrified I would wake up again as I did on Sunday morning, in all that awful pain. Fortunately I was exhausted, because I fell asleep. In the morning I didn't feel any better -- but I didn't feel any worse. And that was all I really wanted at that moment. For a long time on Sunday, being without pain was all I thought I could ever want again in this world.