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Knowing I'd be in the hospital for a few days, I asked Jeff if I
could borrow his disused laptop to keep myself occupied. He agreed.
It only had a single floppy drive for storage, but that wouldn't be a
problem as I only wanted to use it to write up some new stuff. After
the disappointment with the local PBS station collecting money to
continue showing Doctor Who, then keeping the money and
dropping the show, I decided to do something about it. Given
the names of those who contacted me to volunteer on pledge night,
plus those I knew in the local science fiction club who liked Doctor
Who, I decided I was going to create a Doctor Who focused
newsletter: 'The Doctor Who Report', I'll call it, TDWR. My slack
time at the hospital would be devoted to creating a template with
sample articles for it and, to help fill it out, I'd use it as a
platform to pull out one of my many Doctor Who story ideas and
write it up and serialize it over a few issues.
But ultimately that wasn't why I was at the hospital...
Before my stay, my mother's primary doctor wanted me to have a
Glucose Tolerance Test. The lab had me drink a soda pop like bottle
of orange drink and then sampled my blood about every fifteen minutes
for two hours. By the last half hour of it I was shaky and they
could no longer find a good vein to draw blood from and eventually
had to get my last samples from my feet. When I saw the doctor about
the results, he told me that the test had actually showed that I was
better able to metabolize the glucose as my system had cleared it out
of my blood stream in little over an hour and a half rather than the
typical two hours. He asked if I still wanted to do the hospital
stay and, as the Glucose Tolerance Test hadn't apparently shed any
light on my weight loss issues, I said ''Yes.''
I was scheduled to arrive first thing Monday morning where they
checked me in, weighed me, and I changed into comfortable clothing
for the stay. The nurse interviewed me as she filled out the intake
forms and then I was left to settle on the bed and wait. It was
already too late to get a breakfast for the day and I spent a little
time flipping though the handful of over the air broadcast
channels on the room's T.V.. Then I dozed off for a little nap until
the doctor arrived to tell me of the plans: I would be eating a
monitored diet and they would be collecting everything on the way out
as well as taking blood tests. There would be some other things
happening as well and I'd find out about them as they came.
All seemed clear and he was on his way to the next room. I pulled
out the laptop and started fleshing out what TDWR would look like:
Publishing information page, check, Table of contents page,
check, Front cover and Back cover, check... I had
four pages already planned out for each issue! Spending time
with the science fiction groups I had seen various formats of
newsletters, all photocopier based. They generally fell into either
lose sheets stapled at the top left corner, or folded sheets stapled
at the fold to make a little magazine-like booklet. I thought the
latter looked spiffier and it would save on publishing costs as I
could use the photocopier to reduce the size of the master pages to
fit in the exposed leaf of each eight and a half inch by eleven
folded sheet. Effectively I'd get twice as many pages with the same
number of sheets and, as I wouldn't really be fully reducing
the size of the text so each leaf would fit the same content as a
full sheet, I'd be able to make my content span more pages with less
scrounging for submissions.
After lunch was served, I was visited by another doctor who wanted to
chat with me. He asked why I was here and I told him of my history
of unexplained weight loss and he asked about my background and came
to the question of 'had I ever heard
disembodied voices in my head?' I told him I did. He paused
for a moment and asked me to explain. I mentioned that sometimes
when I'd be writing a story and I was really into it, it'd be like
just hearing the characters talking in my head while I simply
transcribed what was said. He asked if I'd been writing for a while
and I said for a few years and even showed him the rough-out I was
doing for the newsletter. He seemed to be comforted by this and back
at ease. A few years later, I'd realized I had ducked a major
bullet as he could have just not asked for any
follow-up detail and summarily labeled me schizophrenic and thrown
away the key, as it were.
He asked if there was anything in my life that had left me feeling
badly or uncomfortable. While I didn't mention my strange puberty, I
did note that when my teen years came I found myself more comfortable
seeking friends who were older than me and shared similar interests,
than spending time with my peers who had become more focused on
dating. He noted this down in his report as a 'possible adjustment
disorder' but otherwise gave me a clean mental bill of health. This
was when I realized he was a psychologist and not just someone in my
room for a chat. My tummy was starting to grumble painfully and I
asked if there was anything else, he didn't think so and we parted
ways.
And I went straight to the room's bathroom and used it. When being
introduced to the room, the nurse had pointed out that the toilet had
two plastic pans inserted into it, one for poo, and one for pee and I
was to make sure I didn't get the two mixed up. I did the best I
could over a long period of abdominal pain and associated 'output',
and then hobbled back to my bed to lay down and press the nurse call
button. It was the worst time I had to that point going to the
bathroom and wondered what had triggered it. When she arrived she
guessed on her own why she had been called, perhaps I should have
closed the bathroom door once I had been done. Output taken and
new collection pans put in place, I was left to recuperate after my
bout. I dozed off.
I was awoken as it was time for dinner and my mother came to visit me
once she had finished with her shift. She soon left and after dinner
was done, I was surprised by how little they were having me eat. I
asked if I could have more, but as my diet was pre-planned there
wasn't any latitude. I pulled-out the laptop and began clicking away
on a sample opinion piece to close out the sample newsletter.
I had more gurgles again, but this time far less output. While the
nurse came to collect, I crawled back into bed wondering what the
heck they were feeding me to be causing such diarrhea. But I
consoled myself it was all part of the 'monitoring' I was receiving
and watched a little television before dozing off for the night. The
second and third days were much the same, day two was for blood
testing and a visit from my friend Jeff.
Day three was for a C.T. scan of the brain in search of a brain tumor
that would explain my weight loss, how a brain tumor could make
the body not absorb food, I didn't understand, but it was all
part of the plan, I assumed. For the C.T. scan I had to remove my
ear studs and after one pass, they gave me an I.V. of 'contrast dye'.
It turned out I started to have a bad reaction to it by the time
they were taking me back to the room: Red rashes covering my skin,
profound weakness and tremors. Fortunately they were wheeling me
back up to the room anyhow but, once we got there, they had to get
staff to help me out of the wheel chair and back into the bed. They
placed a small cup in my lap which had my ear studs in them and when
I tried to put them in my hands were too stiff and shaky to handle
them and I asked the nurse who was leaving if she could put them back
in for me. She did, then left to call my doctor to find out what to
do about my reaction to the dye.
He concluded just to have me remain in the hospital for another night
of observation, then I'd be discharged in the morning rather than
this evening. After a few hours the red patches faded and the
shakiness & weakness subsided enough that I could handle the
laptop and finish plotting out the newsletter to further include a news section and then a fiction piece, fitted
in before the final opinion piece. Feeling I had a good handle on
it, I called it a night.
The next morning the doctor came in and revealed to me that they had
been adding corn syrup to every meal and I hadn't had any bad
reaction to it. I brought up the abdominal pains and bouts of
diarrhea and he assured me I hadn't had any of that. He had
talked to my mother and found that I hadn't been eating any of her
cooking in years and that was the cause of my weight loss. I just
had to eat her cooking and I'd be fine. This was jaw-dropping
as my mother hadn't prepared a meal for me since I was ten years old.
My subsequent guess was, when the doctor asked her if I ate what
she made for me, rather that say she hadn't made anything for me and
appear as a bad mother, she covered her ass by replying that I
hadn't eaten anything she had cooked, without clarifying that
anything she did cook wasn't for me.
The doctor then pointed out that since they had been weighing me each
day, I had actually gained weight during my stay at the hospital,
proving that it was simply a case of me not eating enough food. He
had scheduled me for another test just to be complete as well
as a follow-up with the hospital dietician, who would explain to me
how to eat properly from now on, as well as a series of appointments
with a Psychiatric Nurse who would also be 'helping me'.
I was dumbfounded as I was left to dress and collect my things to
go home.
The follow-up test was a 'barium enema' which required me to have an
empty colon. It had been scheduled for later but had I known, after
all the bouts of diarrhea, I could have taken it while at the
hospital. Still, I did as I was told and got ready for the test. I
arrived back at the hospital and was told the steps of the procedure:
I would be placed on my side on a table, when they were ready for the
test they would give me an injection of glucagon to reduce any
discomfort I may have, pointing out the syringe to me on a small
tray near by, they would then fill my colon with barium and air
and have me pose in different positions while they took x-rays.
After a bit, the guy in charge came and inserted the tube and went to
work. It was profoundly painful and once they were done I was left
lying on the table, staring at the unused syringe still on the nearby
tray. The nurse told me I could use the adjoining restroom if I
needed ''to empty myself'' and then get dressed and go home. But
with the pain and the shakes I just remained on the cold steel table
that was actually feeling warmer than I did.
The nurse returned after a while to find me still lying there
shivering and told me I had to get dressed and leave. When I tried
to get off the table as prompted I collapsed to the floor and the
nurse had to struggle to get me back up to my feet and to the
restroom where I sat on the toilet for a long time, then struggled to
get on my clothes. Out of the bathroom, I fell to my knees and the
nurse had to again help me back up to my feet and lead me to the
hallway. She pointed out that I could use the hand railing along the
walls on my way to the parking garage. I did but, once I reached the
door out, I had to wait until I felt I had enough energy and balance
to get to the car. Finally, I made it and drove myself back to my
mother's mobile home but found I was too weak to leave the car at
that moment and lay my head on the steering wheel and took a short
nap. Coming to with my body again quaking from the cooling car in
the fall weather, I got out and made my way to the door, let himself
in, then hugged the walls as I made my way to my bedroom to then
collapse on top of the bed and sleep the rest of the day away.
Now that was a day I had ended up eating very little.
The following morning, after my mother had gone to work, I got myself
up and then made my way to the bathroom and emptied out what was left
of the test from my colon. Before taking a shower to clean myself up
and get into fresh clothes, I weighed myself and found I was at the
lowest adult weight I had ever been at in my life, about the same I
had weighed when I was twelve years old.
After my shower, I got dressed and simply collapsed back onto the
bed. It wasn't until the middle of the afternoon that I felt strong
enough to get up and order my first delivery pizza of
the day.
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