This has, indeed, been a weird week. Let's say two weeks; although being in the hospital is always weird. I lived to the ripe old age of 19-years-old before I ever spent more than several hours in waiting rooms, and was actually admitted as a patient. I got tonsillitis in Navy Boot Camp as a reaction to a massive penicillin shot (1.5 million units) we received on the Wednesday of our fourth week of training. I tried to slog my way through it, but fell behind in marches, had bed sweats every night, until the final straw dropped when my Company Commander demanded I perform twice the Company number (we were Company 106, so 212) in Jumping Jacks, carrying two 8.5 pound M1 rifles, tied together with clothes stops (a small piece of braded strings, with metal clips on both ends, to keep them from unravelling). It was some minor thing, otherwise I'd have been found in a small pile in the showers, I wasn't performing (really I shouldn't have been trying), but I managed to get through the entire fourth week of Recruit Training, and 212 Jumping Jacks before my throat closed up, and I passed out in the barracks.
When I came to, I was in the Dispensary at NTC San Diego, in a bed, being fed fluids intravenously, in a ward with 20 other guys, and my CC at my elbow telling me he didn't mean to push me that hard, particularly when I was really sick, but I wasn't going to have to go to another Company, repeating the 4th week, and falling a week behind in graduation. Week 5 was "Service Week," and the Company would help out in the galley, mess decks, and other places around the base where warm bodies were required, and there was no real training going on, so the week I spent in the Dispensary didn't hurt my "Training Days," something required for graduation. This was mid-April, 1971.
I never spent another night in the hospital until August 6, 2002, when I suffered a stroke, which proved to be my second such event. Five days there. Had to learn to walk again, write my name again, and a bunch of other things before they'd let me leave.
Eleven years later (notice that the time between is growing shorter), I was in to get a left upper lobectomy, where they removed 20% of my lungs. Another five days.
2015, twice I'm admitted for being severely dehydrated, to the point where my kidneys are failing. Five more for each of them.
2020, I am admitted to NorthBay Hospital, two more times, due to bleeding in my GI tract. Four days the first time, eight days the second. Bleeding stopped, I got 6 pints of blood, and every antibiotic available to the common man. The eight days for my second stay was mostly concerned with sepsis and C-Diff issues than the GI Bleed, even though my hemoglobin levels had dropped to below half of normal.
2021, I am admitted to NorthBay, for the third time in 13-months, for GI bleeding. Seven days this time, and I'm still no closer to knowing why my body wants to go nuts annually.
