a side note on hospitals.

I know people generally don’t like to be in hospitals and usually want to go home soon, but American hospitals seem to release people far too soon; my biker friend really has no business being released so soon. Especially as drugged up as he is right now – he will need 24/7 monitoring, and lives by himself.

He’d be fucked if something happened and no one was there to, at the least, call for an ambulance.

In my experience, it’s probably best to stay longer in hospital than is the norm here in America. I had surgery in Japan, a pylonidal cyst on my lower back (a huge lump that bled, eventually, in the upper crack of my ass, to be specific). The "thing" has been lanced and drained when I was in the Navy, knifed open in the clinic, drained, and packed with yards (it seemed like) of gauze, and then I went home. My newly married wife had to treat it for us. ("In sickness and in health") Ten years later when I lived in Japan, it came back, painfully, and broke the skin and, using the bathroom, the tissue came up red with blood.

It was an "oh shit!" moment.

I was on the national health care plan, and went to Kobe City Hospital’s treatment center, where I saw a doctor, that day, and it was recommended that they surgically remove it… the next day. I was admitted to the hospital, the next day, and surgery was performed. (the surgeon proudly showed me the twisted, root-like thing that she had removed, and oh golly, it was a good thing I was so drugged up, lying naked on a table in a room full of women, looking at that thing)

In the US, I would have been sent home, probably the same day, but in Japan, they kept me in the hospital for ten days; I didn’t go home until the surgery scar had healed, and the only reason I went back to the hospital was so that the doctor could make sure I was healing and had not split open the surgery scar. They treated me right, and there has been no repeat of the cyst since they got it all. I have a rather large Z-shaped scar where they cut it out, a scar very few people have ever seen or know about, given it’s location on my body.

After the car wreck in 1998, I was in the trauma center at OHSU, where my friend is now, and then was transferred to another hospital, spending 59 days in hospital, recovering, and another nine months in an Adult Foster Home, and another 4 years recovering enough to try to work again.

I must have been really fucked up, to spend 59 days in hospital, but brain injuries are like that, and I was in no way, shape, or form, ready to live by myself after the hospitals. Besides, I had destroyed the life I had before and had nothing to "go back to", so great were my injuries. I haven’t ever really recovered; my brain will always be damaged, and I have learned to live with it as best as I can.  I think I’ve done pretty well, but there’s no recovery in some cases; it’s just learning how to live with your new reality that matters.

My biker friend wants to go home; he’s stubborn as a mule, and even though he can’t move without groaning and grimacing in pain, and most certainly cannot live alone right now, they are talking about sending him home soon.  He is drugged to the point of inability to care for himself, and risks re-injuring himself

That is, to be blunt, ri – fucking- diculous.

I want to do the very best I can for my brotha by anotha mutha, and will push to be his "caregiver". I’m not a doctor, but I was a boy scout with his first aid merit badge, and I was the first aid man on my Battle Stations repair locker team on my ship – I know something about treating battle injuries, and want to "be there" for my friend.  Even better if, right now, I can make some money doing it, but that’s not the main point.  My friend is not really ready to go home alone, and I will help him whether or not there’s any money in it for me.  No one will say it outloud, but he needs me, and I will be there.

 

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