hey guys, it's been rough since just before Feb 22.
I spent from Feb. 22 until May 16 in the hospital; went in with acute respiratory failure. I'll try to lay it out the best I can remember. On Feb. 22, my brother came home from work and found me sitting on the edge of my bed in an unresponsive state. Knowing he was never going to get me in the truck the way I was, he called a friend of ours that works at the local hospital. He came over, and since there was no way I was going to be able to get in HIS truck either, he went home to get his wife's van. They took me to the ER and the "fun" started. Apparently, they weren't able to get my O2 level to stabilize, so they had to take me to Research Medical Center in Kansas City, MO. About a week or so later, they woke me up in the intensive care unit, where I wasn't able to talk or easily communicate at all. Eventually I had my brother bring my phone up so I could at least talk using text entry in a notepad app, since nobody could seem to read lips to save their lives. After putting in a tracheostomy tube, it was a little easier to communicate, especially after they moved me to the 4th floor and gave me a speaking valve. I was on a tube feed for a while, but that seemed to be making me nauseous really bad, and eventually they decided I didn't need the tube feed anyway since they were able to give me real food. It took about 4 weeks or somewhere around there before I was able to sit up on the edge of my bed without getting sick, and sometime later physical therapy brought up a "stander" to help me to get out of bed and to the recliner, or to the bedside toilet, then later in the evening to get back to bed. After a few days; maybe a week, I was able to start walking with a walker, and was able to make it across the room and back, stopping to rest for a few minutes in the middle. After a while, they took me to floor 6, where I was for a few days, then on the 30th of March or so, they moved me to the rehab unit on the 2nd floor, where stayed until the 16th of May. When I first got to the unit, I couldn't even walk the 50 feet to the rehab gym, I was so weak still. Eventually, I got to where I could walk half of the unit, which was 600 feet the whole way, but not without a lot of knee pain.