10 Steps of moving

1. Remember to clean, clean…CLEAN!
2. Try to lure friends to help move the big stuff (couch, mattresses, chairs).
3. Gather all keys and write down moving addresses.
4. Start selling top shelf items (i.e. some of my DVD collection), to minimize moving action.
5. Be sure to set bed when moving to another room.
6. Realize when the electricity will shut off (note to self, make sure NOT to shut electricity a week earlier in the future).
7. Yankee swap stuff with a little brother (ps3, Guitar Hero).
8. Make sure the house you are moving to has a washing machine.
9. Wi-fi a plus, with house server installed.
10. Having a bad a roommate that flew military helicopters in the past.

Until next time.

Hospital update

My update:

- After a few days out of the hospital, the days has been pushing by. I have to visit a doctor on the west side of Tucson daily (St. Mary’s Hospital, if you must know) to change my bandages.

- I’m about 90 percent moved from my apartment to the house with roommates, across the street with my brother Tim.

- Going back to work tomorrow (Wednesday).

- Have a ton of hospital bills in the mail, and have to sort them out.

- At least I have enough T.V. commercials in the brain that I don’t have to watch T.V. much anymore!

Until next time…

“What started out as a boil on my butt…”

As many of you may already know, I was hospitalized for a few weeks (a.k.a. missing work, no email, no Facebook/Twitter). Here is what happened.

It started out on Friday (10/3), as a boil on my left butt cheek. I immediately thought of it as a boil and treated it as a boil (i.e. cleaned and changed bandages a few times a day, and applied heat to it, in an attempt to drain all the pus out of it). This process was very painful, and hurt to sit and walk for long periods of time.

After a week of trying to treat it myself, on Friday (10/10), I admitted myself to Northwest Medical Center because it wasn’t looking great and it was too painful. It was tough to drive there myself and wait in the emergency room. The ER nurse and doctor both looked at the wound and decided I needed surgery, so I would had to wait overnight for surgery in the hospital. I was then changed into hospital garb, slapped an IV on me and told to rest in a room with a TV, while watching game 1 of  the NL playoffs. I was then moved to 3rd floor into my own room with a TV and stayed the night, expecting to be out the day after. Surgery was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, (10/11). I was put under and the surgeon did his magic and recovered Saturday evening.

After a few days, I thought I would be out fairly quick, perhaps sometime during the week. During the process, I needed to sign up for insurance (work insurance wouldn’t kick in until sometime in November and previous insurance had expired). So the wait began. The hospital moved me twice during the week, into two different rooms. During the week, it was found that I am allergic to one of the oral/IV antibiotics I had been administered, and because of this being my first stay in a hospital, I didn’t know that. So with the allergic reaction I had developed a skin rash all over my body, and as a result, developed high fevers (at a period of 6-8 hours at at time) and generally bedridden.

One solace: the TV. I couldn’t believe the amount of television I could watch during the week. Before, I was never a TV watcher, because I did not have cable. I watched a lot of CNN, commercials, all the NL playoff games with the exception of game 7, etc.)

Finally, around (10/20), the insurance was approved and plans were made of the discharge out of the hospital. Tuesday the 21st, was a rest day, patching me up for discharge. On Wednesday the 22nd, I was discharge out of the hospital, on my little brother’s birthday (Happy birthday, Steve!) and under doctor’s orders for me not to go to work for a week and meet with a nurse once a day on the other side of town at St. Mary’s hospital to change my dressing on my wound.

I would like to thank all the 50+ doctors/nurses/nurse techs/the blood techs that drew blood from me at 4:20am every morning at Northwest Medical Center. I am very thankful for their service to me, the patient and the wound. Over the few weeks that we known each other, I felt I really got to know some of them. I suppose in the future, I would see one of them at a grocery store and they would ask me the question, “How’s my butt?”… maybe.

Special thanks for my brothers (Steve and Tim) for visiting me in hospital, Eric and Tony, my new roommates, Sonny and John, and special thanks to Sam, for driving my car back to my home, while wearing the medical gloves he took from my hospital room.

The moral of the story is: if you see a boil on your butt, please, please go to the hospital right away and doctors can take care of that for you.

Until next time…