So I got released from the hospital today.
I still have cellulitis, but I’m on my way to living my life without it.
Cut to a clip of me throwing a football and you’ve got the commercial for the cocktail of antibiotics that I’m on!
But seriously, kids – I do not recommend cellulitis. I haven’t the foggiest idea how I got it, but I wouldn’t suggest that anyone else give it a try.
0/5 – Skin Infection not recommended
Thankfully, I had a pretty great care team during my stay that made the whole thing as manageable as possible … thanks to Katie, Brandon, Kristen, and Caitlin for taking care of me and finding me warm socks and all sorts of other things that I don’t think a lot of people realize are just part of the job for nurses. And while you don’t need to go to college to get someone a blanket or refill their ice water, I can’t tell you how much those little gestures helped to make my first stay in a hospital ever a little less lonely.
😉
Anyways, a few final thoughts on my stay before switching track into full blown Christmas vacation mode…
- The Food Network is a terrible channel to watch in the hospital, particularly at mealtime when you’re trying to figure out how to stomach down “real eggs” and “definitely real sausage” and “not at all cardboard-based pancakes” that the dietary people swear they prepared in a bonafide kitchen and not a microwave and everything.
- Not having reliable wifi was a real blow. Luckily, they had a decent movie selection, so I watched several during my stay, but I didn’t do a lot online because staring at my phone was bothering me and to write anything I had to do it offline, then tether my laptop to my phone to be able to post.
- Movies!
- 1) Get Smart … I just love this movie, so I watched this one the first night I got there. It was interesting to see where the edits for TV were made, but I was relieved that the bit with the swordfish was still included – even if “Holy shit! Holy shit! A swordfish almost just went through my head!” did get corrected to “Holy stuff…” or some other such nonsense…
- 2) Pacific Rim: Uprising … I hated the first movie, so I figured this was going to be garbage, and it kind of was. I know these movies are more about just giant things fighting, but I have a hard time when the plot holes are big enough for Kaiju to drift through…
- 3) Jack Reacher: Never Go Back … I thought I remembered Sara and I not really liking the first one, but this was honestly decent. It was basically almost another Mission: Impossible story that gave Tom Cruise two hours in which to be a bad ass, which is always a fun way to wait for one’s pain medication to kick in! 😉
- Honorable Mention) A Christmas Story … I was going to slip in this one last night, but ended up making some phone calls instead. Sorry, Ralphie – you’ll shoot your eye out soon enough, though – I promise.
- I must admit that at least once I did contemplate whether I could sneak out to my car and run home for nothing in particular before anyone noticed, considering that the hospital is barely five miles from my house. I pictured stuffing the bed with towels, a la Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and then I remembered that back in reality I couldn’t make it five feet to the bathroom without a walker…
- I used a walker for the first time! At only 38 years old! It was kind of embarrassing, but then again, so was watching me try to walk without it.
- A good indicator of how to know when I’m really sick is when I’m willing to wear socks to bed.
- Also, having another person put on your socks for you is both a very humbling and very endearing thing to experience.
- Sleeping all day in the hospital isn’t nearly as enjoyable as you think it sounds when you consider it’s because sleeping at the hospital is perpetually interrupted by lab tests and vital signs and people asking you to sign forms promising that you’ll definitely still pay, even if the charges are mutually agreed to be ridiculous.
- And last but not least, thankfully my charges should be zero or close to it because we exceeded the Out of Pocket Maximum for our insurance two months ago.
So if you’re still thinking about getting cellulitis after all of these glowing reviews that I’ve given for it, I’d recommend waiting until the insurance company is going to pick up the tab before you stumble into the ER on an otherwise uneventful Sunday afternoon.
For best results, wait until about 5:00am and sneak into your insurance company’s room to ask if they’re cool with it – 5:00 am is when people give the best feedback, at least in my own personal experience as a veteran, one-time hospital patient…