No, I haven’t abandoned you my loyal audience or especially my beloved blog, first and foremost I want you to understand that. (We have talked about it before, - - just read the archives. :) The truth of the matter is I’m not going anywhere soon . . . at least that’s what my doctor tells me, but then again you just never know. The point being there’s been a small gap in my publishing schedule, and it shows if you been paying close attention . . . If you haven't noticed all the better, I feel that I could take a small vacation with no retribution, without a handful of fans even noticing.
I wish that was the case but so far it is not . . . because I went under the knife a couple of years ago, and it has been anything but a vacation. The time prior to this was just stressful and took a lot out of me, the time after my surgery was not as smooth as hoped or predicted. Heck, I'm still not 100% (at least at the time of this writing, which was a while ago, but much better now, kinda) but I hope to be there soon. Then after that work took over my life for a long time, but not no more. So, I haven't disappeared, I haven't given up, I haven't abandoned anything or anybody, got distracted with a dead end job and just had very minor surgery, that’s all . . .
What does any of this mean to you? There is a lesson here for everybody just hang in there. . . Be patient and you will be rewarded for that attribute.
The worse part of the whole adventure came totally unpredicted. Forty-eight hours after being discharged from the hospital I started to feel worse than the day before and the more time that progressed felt worse than when I first came out of surgery, oh wait, a bad comparison I wasn't feeling a thing then. I had a severe fever that spiked at 101.7 and it had definitely put me down, to say the least. This caused an undue return trip to the surgeon, and the hospital, for tests to determine if the surgery didn’t work out as planned, or caused an infection or such. I passed the two major hurdles (which was a great blessing) and was left to fight off a viral infection I had picked up sometime after my surgery, probably at the hospital. Now if you think about it, the place that I went to be made well had the opposite desired effect and made me sick . . . the irony of it all.
So, no excuses, I had a good reason not to publish any blogs lately, (my tendency to procrastinate hasn’t helped much either) the takeaway lesson for all of us involved, and you too is simply this. The stuff I’ve learned since then. If you or a loved one is looking at a hospital stay soon, try to keep the hard-learned lessons, I had to endure, in mind and hopefully, your experience will be a better one than mine. Who really needs to fight a viral infection after surgery anyway.
Hospitals are not as clean and sanitary as they would have you believe they are.[1] Be proactive instead of reactive, assume the worse and the better off you will probably be. A byproduct of surgery is a weakened immune system,[2] which makes you more susceptible to viral attack and bacteria. And trust me there is plenty of those suckers to be found in the hospital and your room may not have been as thoroughly cleaned as you would expect.
Alcohol wipes . . . Bed rails, call buttons, remote controls bed adjustments. It is much better to be safe than sorry.[3]
The worse part of this whole story is that I even had some alcohol wipes with me, intended for the touchscreen on my phone and I thought it would be kind of anal to wipe down some surfaces I would be in contact with, well folks trust me that thought was not anal at all, and now I’m left to ask what if. You would think that at my age I would have learned to trust my gut, intuition told me beforehand, I failed to listen, and paid the price! I guess you could say that I learned the hard way, but even worse than that would be if you decided to not learn from my mistakes, I hope that is not the case because all that suffering would have been for naught if you don’t become proactive.
[1] Every year some 1.7 million people in the U.S. who are admitted to hospitals hoping to get well instead end up getting sicker after picking up infections during their stays, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease
Hospitals are pooling places for sick people and all the germs they carry; just walking into one a puts everyone at a greater risk than normal of contracting an infection. But you're particularly vulnerable if you're immunosuppressed, elderly or an infant—or if you are there for surgery, because cutting the skin and sticking various tubes into the body provides germs new means of access.
[2] Any type of major surgery can stress the body and suppress the immune system. The reasons for this aren’t fully understood, but we do know that surgery and the anesthesia medications given to help make you sleep can be hard on the body.
[3] Your best protection against infection is to make sure everything you come into contact with is clean. If that means reminding your doctor to wash his hands or the equipment he uses, don’t hesitate to do so.
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