Christmas Gifts

Before hitting on the title, tonight will be the first night in nearly two weeks that I will sleep in my bed (last time was the night before the hospital visit). Since then, I've slept in or on: 3 couches in 3 cities (if you count the short nap after waking up with the pain), two beds (counting the hospital bed), and a recliner.

Well, Christmas has come and gone, and while my dad's family still needs to get together for Christmas gift-giving and such (which will be on the 9th, weather permitting) I thought I'd recap what I've gotten so far (not counting the cool scar and meds--and I've only taken one dose each of 2 of the 3 meds).

• 216 spherical magnets
• 3 t-shirts
• 3 pairs of jeans--for the first time in about a year, I have pants that will stay on without a belt
• 3 calendars for the year 2011
• 2 versions of Fluxx (Monty Python and Martian)
• 1 belt (slightly superfluous with the new jeans, but I'll hang onto it just in case)
• 1 can of Axe body spray (Now I just need to find a place to "use" it--if you know what I mean)

One more side note on the hospital visit:

I think I had a prophetic dream before going in--but it may be just a half-remembered memory of something that actually happened during my time there. I'm not sure. Either I dreamt it the night before going in--as I was waking up with the pain--or it actually happened during the post-op haze. I was sitting up in a hospital bed, retching while someone was shoving a kidney dish in my face (the same color as the one that was in my hospital room after I woke up from surgery). I'm fairly sure it was a dream from the night before, but I can't be positive.

Hospital Addendum

There's one thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's post. With how much went on the past couple days, I hope you can forgive me for mild forgetfulness. While I was scared, the only thing that was clear in my mind (other than the fear) was the beginning of Psalm 23--the King James version, even.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul

That calmed me down a lot during that terrifying couple hours between being told I'd need surgery and the surgery.

Hospital

On Friday night, after a 4-person Community-watching, ice cream-eating party, I went to bed at around midnight. I woke up promptly at 4 from sudden onset (at least, I think it was sudden) abdominal pain. After a few minutes, I staggered out to the living room to check WebMD on my computer. Since someone in Iowa City missed Anthem at the Fieldhouse because of it, I considered that it might be appendicitis. I also thought it might just be gas pain or constipation, since I had the same kind of pain a couple months before. WebMD told me to go to the doctor if the pain persisted for four hours.

After a little longer, I decided to give up on sleep and took a shower--still before 5. I took some acetaminophen and sat down to watch Sportscenter--the only thing worth watching before 7 most days. I dozed off for about an hour, waking up at 7 to the alarm I have set. Shortly after that, I got bored with Sportscenter and threw on Iron Man and started to watch. About halfway through, my roommate woke up and started watching it with me. When Iron Man ended, I put in Iron Man 2 and settled in.

The pain started to come back, so I took some more acetaminophen. Shortly after that, the pain came back, even through the meds, and it brought a little fever with it. At that point, I gave up, stopped the movie--it was only halfway through--and said I needed to go to the hospital. This was around 11.

My roommate drove me in, and parked the car while I got checked in and had my initial checkup. When the doctor said I might be there for hours, he decided to head home, and told me to call if I needed anything.

At 1:30, I was told that I'd be getting a CT scan, and that would decide if I needed an appendectomy.

Around 5, the doctor came back and told me my appendix looked slightly enlarged--not a definite surgery time, but in the gray area--and poked me to see if it hurt in the "right" places. It did, so they said they'd try to get me in that evening and take out my appendix. I felt scared, and the only contact I could actually manage was to text my roommate and ask him to get some people praying for me. I couldn't come up with words of my own to explain the situation to anyone that didn't already know I was in the hospital--not even the very simple "Appendix gone bad, need surgery, pray for me". I even had to have the doctor call my parents to let them know.

At about 7, I got wheeled through the hospital to the OR. They ran through what was happening one more time, and we went in. The last thing I remember is joking that "I'm not that paranoid" as half a dozen people crowded around the bed I was lying in, doing various things to get me ready for surgery.

My next memory is very hazy--I remember asking "Where am I?" and getting a response that made no sense whatsoever, and someone saying "1, 2, 3" as people tried to move me from one bed to another.

The first thing I remember fully is talking with the nurse at about 1am Sunday morning--she still had to say my name multiple times to get a response, though. She asked if I could get up and try to go to the bathroom, among other things that I don't remember. I couldn't go. I felt the need, but couldn't. So at around 2am, I said it was too painful to tolerate. The nurse then did an ultrasound (I think--or something similar) to see how much was in my bladder--250mL would mean I'd need a catheter. The number she read off was over 1,000. I tried desperately one last time, but just couldn't go. Catheters are not fun. It wasn't as bad as I'd imagined, but I still wish to avoid ever having that happen again.

My Sunday was mostly spent getting poked, prodded, examined, and interrogated. If none of those were happening, I was probably in the bathroom. I just needed the "help" the first time, and they were pumping me full of fluids. My phone decided to die early that morning, so I couldn't let people know I was out of surgery and okay--I barely got three numbers for a ride home in case I was released that day, and I hadn't been getting much signal anyway. My dad showed up around 10, taking time off work to come and make sure I was okay. I didn't have much pain the whole day, just a little when I had to get up to go to the bathroom. After my dad had gone to get a hotel room for the night--they decided to keep me for one more night, just to be safe--I started to feel as if my arm was being slowly crushed. Since I was going to get to go home in the morning, they just took out the IV and let me go without for the rest of the night.

I got to leave the hospital at about 1 this afternoon. My dad drove me back to my apartment, where I showered, got dressed, and grabbed things to come to Des Moines. My mom had been planning to come out and get me on Wednesday, but my dad is taking a few days off work to stay home and watch out for me while I get better, so I'm in Des Moines until Thursday, then off to see my mom's family for Christmas. After that, I assume I'll be headed back to the IC to hang out until my follow-up appointment on the 4th--which I'll need to arrange a ride to (and from). Unfortunately, I'm not supposed to lift more than 10 pounds for the next 4-6 weeks, so I shouldn't help out with setup and teardown of church--not to mention the issues of getting groceries or doing laundry. (Don't tell the doctors, but I probably will help with setup and teardown anyway--maybe not as much as I would otherwise, but at least wrapping cords)

As I look back, I wouldn't have gone into the hospital as soon if there hadn't been someone else to have appendicitis recently. So this all could have ended worse for me. As it is, it was caught early, I got into surgery quickly, I might even get government-funded insurance that would cover this (thank you, IowaCare--and Iowa taxpayers--I wasn't going to be insured until the 1st without you), and I haven't had much post-op pain. So I'd call this little adventure a success. Plus I'll have a sweet scar on my stomach to show off.

Organization fail

I've been trying to see when my grades would be posted for my first semester here, and it seems like they'll be posted when they get posted. Seriously. I've looked on Kirkwood's website, and I can find no evidence on when grades get posted. Half of my grades are up, and the other two aren't. In the two classes posted so far, I've got a 3.5 GPA--and one of those two was the only one I was even slightly worried about. So it looks like this will beat the old record for best semester GPA at college--old record set Fall 2007 at 3.58 (the first time at ISU that I was on academic probation, and right after my worst semester at 0.72). If I remember, I'll let y'all know if this semester sets a new record, and at what.

One semester down...

I finished my first semester of community college yesterday. I turned in a paper for my pseudo-philosophy class. I wrote the entire paper in about two hours, which included random breaks to get up and walk around. It would have been done sooner, but our ISP will randomly log us out from time to time, and we can only sign back in on my roommate's computer--not sure why this is. This meant that for the first couple hours that I was awake, I couldn't get online. If I can't get online, I don't like to be in front of a computer, so this caused me to put off the paper for a few hours, flirting with the possibility of procrastinating until it's too late. But I got it done with about 20 hours to spare, and could spend the rest of the day doing nothing. So now I've got until the 10th to hang out, accomplish very little, and catch up on sleep. Yay for community college starting up a week before the university.

At some point during this break I may finally have nerd day. We'll see. That would likely mean being up for over 24 hours, and I'm getting old and lame--I can barely stay up past 10 most nights.

Tired

It's been a couple days since the topic of this post happened, but it put me into a slight anti-people mood--by which I mean I wanted to be alone--as well as making me feel exhausted.

On Sunday, I told myself that it was going to happen. I was going to ask "mom" out to lunch for next week after church. During set-up and practice, I kept passing up little chances, not feeling fully confident--and at one point she got some Silly Putty out of her purse, so I was otherwise occupied for a while (yes, I'm a child).

I was slightly distracted during worship and church, and then during tear-down, I kept looking over in her direction. About halfway through tear-down, I got a moment to talk to her, and I asked her if she wanted to have lunch next week. She thought about it for a while, then said she was going back to Ames to be with family and see the Christmas production at C-stone. Since I don't think well on my feet, I didn't follow up with another option, and the conversation just stopped there.

This put me into a slight depression--just to the point where I didn't want to be around others for a couple days--partly because she said no, but probably mostly because the act of asking a woman out is foreign to me--and therefore, very draining. I've asked out a grand total of two women in my lifetime--and they both said no. All my past relationships started the other way, with the woman coming to me--and after those women found out why I don't talk much, the relationships ended.

After church, I was part of a group of four guys that put up Christmas lights at the "Green House", but that was most of my interaction with others--and I did that was because I had agreed to do that before church. I'm still not fully over the tired/anti-people mood, but it's getting better.

And on the positive side, she didn't just turn me down immediately. She did have to think about it, so perhaps I just need to find a better time. My mom turned down my dad at first, too--but maybe I shouldn't use that as an example....

Basketball season

I know, basketball has been happening for a few weeks now, but here's some things I'd like to see in basketball sometime soon:

1. Raise the rim -- it's too easy for these giants to dunk, and dunking (to me) is the epitome of crappy playing. If it only takes jumping one foot into the air to dunk, the rim is too low--I could do that when I weighed 300 pounds
2. Lose the phrase "Diaper Dandy" -- I don't know when they started calling star freshmen this, but it's annoying. However, I fear the only way it will go away is if there's a player who happens to be incontinent, and sues after being called a "diaper dandy"
3. Teach players to play defense in the NBA -- how does scoring increase by 50% when they only play a 20% longer game, unless they no longer play defense? (I'm a big fan of defensive contests in all sports, which is part of the reason I don't like basketball) You may say that players are just better, but shouldn't defensive skills increase too?
4. De-value the dunk -- again, I hate dunking. It shouldn't be worth the same as shooting from 10 feet away
5. Less timeouts per team and/or harsher penalties (more free throws, free throws plus possession, eject players for fewer fouls, let the team that was fouled choose who takes the free throws, etc.) for high numbers of fouls late in the game -- the end of the game takes far too long. Foul, free throws, timeout, shoot, foul, free throws, timeout, shoot, etc.... And while on this subject, why does taking a timeout move the ball halfway down the court? I've never understood that

For those that are wondering, no I don't really watch basketball anymore. I was too traumatized when the Bulls broke up. They still could've been good without Jordan.

Anyway, I've got Spanish soon, so I should end this post.