Hospital + Stupidity = Hospital-ity

Let me welcome all of you back with a thank you. Thank you for all of the well wishes I received while in the hospital. I am home now and on the long road to recovery. I checked in to the hospital on Tuesday morning for a life changing surgery...I left for home Thursday night...what happened in between? Feel free to read on and share my experience!

So I wake up after who knows how many hours of being under anesthesia. I wake up in what will be my room for the next couple of days. I get to share a room with Mr. Brown. Nay, not Quentin Tarantino from Reservoir Dogs...my new roommate for the next day or so. How do I know that Mr. Brown's name is indeed Mr. Brown? Because every 15 minutes there is another nurse coming in and yelling his name. Mr. Brown, I need to take your vitals. Mr. Brown, you need to take your pills. Mr. Brown, you need to get up and walk around. Mr. Brown had his hip replaced 6 days earlier. He could have used some serious hearing aides too!  Mr. Brown turned the volume up to 100 on his television and decided to fall asleep. As each nurse came in the room, I would ask them to turn his volume down so that I could hear the Yankee game on my TV with my headphones on. The nurse usually turned it down and apologized for Mr. Brown since he was very hard of hearing. Without fail, Mr. Brown would wake up and accuse the nurse for changing his channel. He would fall asleep with the news on and wake up to something like America's Got Talent. I would sit there and laugh at the expense of the poor nurse explaining to Mr. Brown that she didn't change his channel. Mr. Brown left the next day.

My next roommate had a name, but I don't know what it was...he was brought into the room and was forced to stay the night because he had arthroscopic wrist surgery and there was no one to watch over him at home for the night. Every time a nurse would come into the room, I would hear him asking for Morphine. He had a camera pushed into his wrist to see if there was anything wrong. I am sure that was painful....I had my kneecap removed and replaced with spare parts....I didn't ask for pain killers until day 2. I am not saying that I am some sort of badass...I am just saying that this guy was in it for the Morphine. The nurse would keep telling him..."you just had a Morphine shot 2 hours ago, you have to wait at least 4 hours between shots." I didn't hear anything else out of this guy except "Can I get some Morphine?" until he pulled out his phone at 11am. This...this was funny. I don't know who he was talking to, but this was the conversation, word for word (I had to write it down!!). "If I dream later, I think I am going to dream about you. The image of you isn't copyright protected is it? I don't want to go to jail for dreaming about you. Alright..call me later if I am allowed to dream about you. Have a good day in school...bye." Where do they find these stupid people, and why do they send them to me? He finally checked out too.

Then I got to check out! My therapists had me up and walking around the hospital with a walker. I am very happy about that because if I had gone home without walking first, I would be having a serious hard time now. I woke up this morning at some stupid hour and had my first disagreement with my knee. My knee thinks that it needs to shoot out in pain to let me know that it is boss. I think that I need to walk around more to show my knee that I am the one in charge here. I have 30 days ahead of me to battle my own body parts and determine who is actually running this show. This new knee is an intruder...a stranger to my body and my household. It is about to learn that I am one stubborn son of a bitch, and I don't give up without a fight. Stay tuned true believers....this is going to be a fight of epic proportions! We shall see who comes out on top! Until next time, same Salty time, same Salty channel!

-Salty Dog