Beginning Anew, Part 2

After the surgery, I was taken to the ICU to recover. I was out for a week, as my family and friends and the doctors all waited to see if I would respond to the antibiotics. Soon, my fever broke. After this I woke up, although I have no memories of the first week. I was basically just responding to different stimuli in the room. I was focusing in the direction of voices in the room. I seemed to respond when they turned the television on and Star Wars was playing.

When I finally became consciously aware of things, I remember being very confused. I didn't know where I was, or what time or date it was. I spent a lot of time drifting in and our of sleep. I remember thinking to myself at one point that I must be at the University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City for some reason. My brothers, their wives, and my nephew flew in soon after they learned that I was in the hospital. I do remember them coming in and saying goodbye. Of course, this entire time I've been intubated so I was unable to speak. So all I could do was smile, nod, and point.

It was about this time that I became fully aware of my surroundings. I saw a note that had been left for the staff that I liked the Disney Channel and the SciFi Channel on the television. I looked at the calendar across the room, and came to a startling realization. As far as I had know up to this point, I had been in the hospital for a couple of days. But, when I saw the days marked off on the calendar, I realized that I had been in the hospital for a week!

I also became aware of something that would completely change my view of the world. I was unable to move my legs, and my arms were nearly useless. And on top of that, I could not feel my feet. I don't remember really saying anything about it, but it definitely scared me.

A couple of days after I woke up, the decision was made to remove the breathing tube from my mouth and do a tracheotomy. This is basically a breathing tube in the throat that allows you to breath with the help of a ventilator, but also be able to do things like eating and drinking. This was my first surgery that I was aware of. I was apprehensive, but came through with flying colors.

Soon after I became aware of the world around me, I experienced my first bout with dialysis. During this whole ordeal, my kidneys had shut down, which meant there was nothing to remove the impurities from my blood. The doctors were also using the process to remove excess fluid from my body. In an attempt to bring my blood pressure up to a level that they could at least measure, they pumped my full of fluids. Apparently, I look unbelievably bloated after this process. Needless to say, there was a lot of excess fluid to remove.

During dialysis, your blood is cycled through a machine that basically performs the function of the kidneys. This process is very tiring, and can make you sick to your stomach, especially if they are also pulling massive amounts of fluids off of your body. There are a number of restrictions that go along with this process. They put you on a fluid restriction. You do not realize just how thirsty you can get until you can't have anything to drink. The nurses did a good job of regulating my liquids so that I didn't use everything up early in the day. But there was a lot of eating ice chips in the meantime.

There are also restrictions on the diet. I was not able to eat foods with a lot of potassium or phosphorus. This removed pretty much all dairy from my diet, and for someone who loves milk and cheese, this was a huge deal. So, I had to put non-dairy creamer on my cereal in the morning, and I was unable to have any milk to drink. No grilled cheese sandwiches, no cheese burgers, no pizza. If dialysis did not bring my kidneys back to life, I wasn't sure how I was going to survive with such a limited diet.

More later...