Today marks a full week since I’ve been out of the hospital. It’s been a pretty decent week, at that.
On the day I got out of the hospital, I pushed myself and went to the store with my wife. She grabbed all the groceries, and I sat at the pharmacy getting my two prescriptions — narcotic pain meds and antibiotics. It felt good to be out again, but even the amount of walking I did from the car to the pharmacy and back was pretty tiring. That’s the longest I had walked since my surgery.
Given my immune system was still reduced since the surgery, I’ve been extra careful about washing my hands, and after I got back from being in public, that night was no exception. Luckily this past week has not seen any ill effects. However, a couple of fun things happened that I figure I would retell.
On Tuesday I went back to the surgeon for a checkup and to get my staples removed. As he was plucking them, I asked, “How many staples did I have put in?”
Him: “We don’t usually keep count on such a big incision” (It goes from right below my sternum to below my belly button.)
Me: chuckled, realized it made my belly jiggle, and apologized
Him: “I do remember that I had to use two staple guns though.”
Me: “One gun wasn’t enough?”
Him: “Nope, not without a reload.”
I actually really like the surgeon. He’s a practical person, and doesn’t BS. He’s always let me know of the concern of infection, and when I ask for reassurance that it’s improbable, he replies, “It happens.” In some ways I wish he’d say, “Nope, no worries here!” but I appreciate that he’s flat out honest.
My wound is pretty gnarly. Two spots ‘reopened,’ and my lovely wife has to help me every day pack gauze into it to let it literally, “heal from the inside out.” He said it wasn’t uncommon for this to happen. I’m unsure how long we get to have this ritual, but it’s for at least the next week or two.
But despite not having a fully healed wound yet, I’m fairly mobile. I don’t get nearly as tired as I did a week ago, and I’m a bit more active. I’m back to pretty much full days working, although I’m not sitting at my desk. I’m usually in the recliner with my laptop. Sitting at the desk isn’t a big deal, but the recliner is much more comfortable in my current state. I do miss multiple monitors, but I’ll live for the short term.
The Tire
I’m supposed to have a limit of lifting 10 lbs and no strenuous exercise, but unfortunately as my wife was leaving for work, she realized the back tire was flat. Having never changed a tire, she called for me to help. With my limit of 10lbs and strenuous activity, I mostly coached her through the process, but I did pitch in on some of the labor. She lifted the tire off the wheel, and helped lift the car up most of the way. She couldn’t budge the lug nuts (they were *really* stuck), so I used my weight with my foot to get them loosened for her. Finally, she lifted the spare up and onto the wheel, and tightened the lug nuts (and yes, I taught her the proper order). I double checked using my body weight, and she had tightened them really well, so all that was left was for her to clean up and for the car to get lowered back to the ground. Since lowering the jack is easier than raising, I got down and lowered it while she cleaned up.
Despite it not sounding like much, I was exhausted. Partially for lack of sleep, but mostly because I hadn’t used these muscles much, especially the ones that got me down on my knees and back up again. I’ve been purposely avoiding getting that low on the ground because of the strain your abs can undergo in the process of standing back up. But, the good news is that if I fall over, as long as the fall doesn’t impact my wound detrimentally, I can get back up on my own.
The Silver Lining
Finally, I wanted to point out the silver lining in the whole story. My weight. I’m a fat guy, and I’ve known it for quite some time. I didn’t mind my weight in high school, around 220lbs during tennis season when I was active. I’m just a bigger guy. But after moving out on my own, I slowly gained wait. I don’t know how long it took me, but it never really hit me how much larger I was than when I was in high school until close to when I got married. I hadn’t bought a lot of new clothes, so my clothes from high school had basically stretched to accommodate the extra 100lbs I had gained. My peak weight was in the 330s. And that’s just unhealthy.
Last year we had done some dieting, and I got myself into the 270s which I was proud of, but then we slipped and started getting back to old habits. At the beginning of this year I was back at 330. Since February, I started being a little more healthy, but not much, and I ended up being about 320 when I went into the hospital.
The good news is that after the 2.5 week ordeal, I came home and was 297. I lost 23 pounds in the hospital. Now, that weight would come completely back in most circumstances, but I realized during my first week of no food that I was being given an interesting opportunity. My stomach was going to shrink a bit, and now was the time to reduce my portion sizes. The silver lining is that I was right, and I’ve been doing a great job of eating less. My appetite is back such that I’m craving to eat at the right times of the day, but I’m not eating as much as I used to. My bowl of cereal in the morning is smaller, for lunch a sandwich completely fills me up, and for dinner I’m also eating more reasonable portions. With all of this, I’ve lost another 7-8 lbs over the past week.
The restricted diet I’m on helps, but we’re almost eating “normally” as we would when we cooked for ourselves. Some of our favorite recipes are off-limits, but being forced to go to the store to get things to cook yourself really improves the quality and healthiness of what you eat.
I’ve really only had one true dessert item since being released. I had a chocolate chip cookie two days ago. Normally, I would have two or three in a single sitting. I just savored that cookie, and was perfectly fine with only having one.
So despite the stress and trauma I’ve gone through, I’m really looking at the silver lining. If I still have Crohn’s disease (there’s a chance all of the affected tissue was removed), then any forced restrictions on my diet will continue helping me. There’s nothing better to change some habits than knowing what sorts of pain deviation will cause.
This post has become long enough that I figure now is the best time to sign off. Thanks to everyone for their well wishes and continued support. I still have a potential for something like an infection on my incision, but everything seems to be healing and recovering well. Plus, I have my usual positive demeanor back, so I’m really feeling like myself.
