The last we left off, I was getting ready to leave the ER. The night nurse I had in the ER had come running over, no exaggeration, pointed at me down the hall and yelled, "We have a ready room for you!" Music to my ears. Now, in my head, hearing a room was ready, it meant that an SA was on their way to get me and I'd be moving my way up in 5 minutes. I was very ready to get out of that hallway after all. However, realistically, things don't materialize that quickly, report has to be given to the new nurse, the floor has to be calm enough for me to head up, etc.. All in all, it was probably about 20 or 30 minutes before I got moving, but in my head it felt like an hour. At this point, 36 hours into my ER stay, my mentality was beginning to fray. After 5 minutes, what felt like 30 minutes, my mind started to play tricks with me and I started to wonder if the nurse had made a mistake or if they had given the room to someone else. I knew that this truly wasn't a sane thought, but nonetheless, I was tired, in pain, and extremely hungry and the thoughts crept in. I fought them back, trying not to bother my nurse every time I saw her and kept reminding myself that the room was waiting for me and I'd be out of that chaotic hallway soon enough. If I could do 36 hours so far down there, what was another hour even.
Eventually, the SA came and off I went to my room. Now, when I say I lucked out with my room, I mean I truly lucked out. It turns out that the hospital will sometimes utilize the pediatric unit to deal with a surge in patients. That's right, they placed me on the kids floor in a private room. I didn't know this at the time, but after a few days I came to learn that there were several other adults staying on the floor as well. It made sense to me when it was explained to me how it worked (you know I had to ask). Only more independent, stable patients were ever sent to the floor. Basically, the adult patients just needed their meds on time. It didn't really add much work to the nurses on the floor, and I wouldn't want to take away the nurse's attention from their pediatric patients. Either way, I was out of that chaotic ER and was now laying down in a peaceful, quiet room with my own bathroom and all the privacy I could ask for.
This is the weird thing though. While I felt relieved to be out of the ER, there was a weird sense of guilt. That ER was packed with people needing care. There were at least four other people in the same hallway I was in, with most likely more in other areas, nevermind the people packed in the treatment area, where I was before. I knew I needed to be moved up to a room as I was going to be there for a few days. I knew I met all the requirements to be where I was. I knew I had to be independent (basically, I can do everything myself except give me my own meds - I learned this after speaking to a nurse regarding requirements to be on the floor). Yet, I still felt guilty. The best way I can explain it is through a somewhat hyperbolic yet still applicable example from a show.
Have you ever seen the show The Pacific? If you haven't, you should. Also, if you haven't, skip this paragraph and come back later. Anyway, there is a scene where one of the main characters, Robert Lecke, who has been fighting throughout the Pacific, is pulled from the front lines after becoming sick and placed in a hospital at a near by island. Once he gets to the island hospital, the initial feeling felt by the soldier (after he goes through the overflow ward) is one of relief. The island hospital is beautiful and relaxing, almost akin to an island resort. You can see the relief and disbelief in Lecke's face. I felt this at first, getting to my room. The peace and quiet, the comfort. But soon, guilt begins to seep in. Lecke's friends are still fighting the war as he is in the hospital dealing with an ailment that he feels is minor. He wants to get back out there to his friends and help them. He can still participate. In somewhat the same way, I felt guilty. Although, to a much quicker extent. As I lay there, half in disbelief, half in sheer exhaustion, my mind raced about what went on in the ER and the sick people there. Despite knowing that the ones who really needed a room and were waiting would not meet criteria for the ward, I couldn't help but feel guilt. I had to come to terms with that. I was here, I was getting treatment. Unlike Lecke, I couldn't go down there and help anyone out (I have to help in different ways). I made peace with it, counted myself lucky to have gotten the room and closed my eyes for some much needed sleep.
The rest of the hospital stay was rather uneventful in a way. The nurses would come to give me my IV steroids three times a day, I went back on a solid food diet and my recovery process began. I will say though, beginning to eat solid food again after not eating for a while was very hard to do..... and very painful. I had to force feed myself at first, and honestly, without my wife motivating me to eat in the beginning, it would've been much harder. Think of the feeling you get when you eat and you can feel your insides beginning to work. It's that weird pulsating feeling. Now, keep in mind that a chunk of my large intestine was basically raw. So along with that weird pulsating feeling, there is pain and that pain lasts for as long as the pulsating does. You can imagine how that may thwart someone from eating when every time you take a bite of food, the pain kicks in. The big problem was, they weren't going to willingly discharge me unless I met two conditions (of course, you can always leave against medical advice but that's usually pretty stupid to do): 1.) I finish my course of medication; and 2) I eat and drink on my own, enough to sustain. I had to get over the pain, and I did, but it happened slowly. It was not dissimilar to after a knee surgery where you have to work up to walking again. At first it hurts, but the more you push through it and make the body part do what it is supposed to, it gets back to normal, relatively pain-free function.
With the eating and drinking down, and the medication course basically over, it was time to start looking towards discharge. Like I said previously, once in the room, things went smoothly and I slowly recovered. I stopped running to the bathroom every 10 minutes, got down to only once per hour and eventually, once every few hours. Still not great, but full recovery was going to take a while. I had a conversation with the GI doctor taking care of me and he informed me that should my new maintenance medication work, I could expect to see improvements (beyond what IV steroids did for me) by Thanksgiving and by Christmas I could perhaps be back up and running at normal capacity. So, approximately five months for a full recovery.... great. This had me very hesitant about discharging from the hospital. Was I going to leave and just end up back in ER in a week, a month? I didn't want to go through that again. No way. I actually thought of asking him to keep me in hospital for a few more days just to be safe. But then my mind went to my wife, who was running around all over the place to make sure things were in order at home and at the hospital; my daughter, who was missing her dad and waiting for me to come home; to the fact that I was in a bed in a pediatric ward and that an occupied bed is no good if a kid gets sick and has nowhere to go, especially if I am there because I'm scared to go home. Ironically, without me asking, the doctor had asked if I wanted to stay another day or two. I said no. It was time to go home. Whatever the future held, I was going to face it with my head held high and I would face the challenges head on.
Being home, I could now focus on the next steps. Recovery and avoidance of reoccurrence. This leads me to the topic of what's next? For those who have been reading, you may have noticed that the theme of recently has been jiu jitsu and progressing through the sport. If you haven't guessed, that has gone out the window a bit, but I also realized how jiu jitsu-centric this site had become, so maybe it is both a good and bad thing. I will still be pursuing my goals in jiu jitsu, but it will be a while until I am able to train again. In all my stubbornness, four weeks after being in hospital, I attempted to do some drills with my grappling dummy in the garage.. It did not go well and I was filled with pain. Maybe a return by Thanksgiving is the goal, but there is no pressure here. I will be back when I'm back.
So, where does that leave me? I've always had a goal to work towards when it came to physical activity. Don't fret, this time is no different and in fact, it is a familiar goal that I had always put off due to my athletic ambitions always taking precedence. Let me elaborate. When I got home from the hospital, I weighed myself. I was curious what the "damage" was from my mishap. I weighed in at 157lbs. I had lost so much weight that my digital scale asked me if I had signed in to the right user on the phone app. For reference, before things turned south, I had weighed myself at 174lbs. I lost 17lbs in two weeks. That's a massive loss, especially as I had been eating any food available to me by the time I left the hospital, so weight was probably slowly starting to come back. Four weeks later, I am back to about 163lbs. I'm getting back to normal. Needless to say, this experience has shown me the importance of having some "buffer" weight for if I ever get sick again. However, it is counterintuitive to just add "bad" weight in the form of fat. I want healthy weight. I've also wanted to add some weight to my frame over the years that I was competing, as well as when I was playing soccer, but it never really worked out due to the schedule and caloric requirements of training. Could this be the right time to do it? I think so. So, for at least the next few months and probably more, I will be diving into the realm of bodybuilding and muscular hypertrophy. I am banking on this being difficult given my disease, but that also means it is something worth pursuing and documenting. I would love to see if I could get all the way up to 200lbs, but the first goal is just 175lbs at 10% bodyfat. That is pretty much where I was before this all happened (actually, I was 177lbs at 12% bodyfat, but who has to know).
I'm really excited about this new direction, especially because it does not mean giving up my previous hobbies of martial arts. I have been looking at this recovery in the perspective of taking some time to tackle goals I have been putting off and picking up old hobbies, like music. I have been talking about bodybuilding for quite some time and as I've previously mentioned, was just kicked down the road due to other priorities. In fact, I've tried several times to add some mass to my frame but with training jiu jitsu 2+ times a week with limited rest, I always found myself overtrained. I also never took the time to properly plan and learn about bodybuilding any of the time I could have alotted to that was spent on watching jiu jitsu instructionals. Not only just this, but there is an added element of a challenge associated with this goal. Given that ulcerative colitis effects nutrient absorption and the disease itself is effected by diet, this puts serious constraints on building up mass. I don't have the luxury of slamming a whole bunch of easy to consume calories as that probably won't feel great (nor would I do this because I have no desire to gain large amounts of fat during this process). Nutrient absorption can be tricky at times, so I will have to be paying attention to that. Lastly, I do not have hours upon hours to spend lifting weights, nor do my energy levels afford me that luxury. Everything will need to be dialed in. Nonetheless, I am excited. I welcome the challenge and I want to prove that it can be done despite IBD. And I plan to document it all for others to help guide other journeys, whether that's learning from my mistakes or following what I do correctly.
On top of this slight change of direction, there is still a lot to be said about this last whole ordeal. Yes, I've detailed the hospital trip in as much detail as I feel appropriate for now, but there is a lot more that resulted as repercussions from this flare up and hospital trip. Just leaving the hospital, for example, was not what I had thought it would be. My return from jiu jitsu is also something I expect will be it's own journey. Just the recovery in itself has been something I have never experienced before nor expected. There is a lot to talk about, a lot that I don't see spoken about anywhere else, to be honest.
With that said, I have to say, this whole ordeal is something I never want to experience again. I will do everything in my power to make sure it never happens again. Not just for me, but for my family. I realized that I am now in a position where my health and my actions truly effect other people. I now must do my best not only for myself but for them. Eating right, staying physically active, yes, those things directly impact my health, but my health, or lack of, effects my family. While this has left me beaten down and at a place where I am starting over, it only motivates me to tackle things even more ferociously. While this is a set back, it is not the end of my journey, nor is it the beginning. I should have anticipated bumps in the road, yet it is easy to get side tracked when things appear to be going smoothly. I got caught, but never again.
Until next time.
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