Hospital Week

I have spent last Wednesday preparing for my spelunking expedition (my euphemism for a medical procedure I prefer not to name), and Thursday morning getting spelunked.

Wednesday was spent on a diet of no solid food, Jell-O™ (which is not regarded as solid) and clear liquids like water, Gatorade™ and diet 7-Up™. It was okay in the morning. But, as the day dragged on, it was becoming tiresome to keep on drinking, and the cleaning process was becoming more and more uncomfortable. I was glad to crawl into bed at 10:00 p.m.

The next day I walked to Madre's at 6:30 a.m., where she was waiting in the car. (It turned out she intended to pick me up at my house. Oops!) We drove to the hospital in Elwood. The only things I have to report about the spelunking expedition is that (1) while they used Demerol on my last two visits, in 2000 and 2006, they used different drugs to knock me out; and (2) no polyps this time, but pockets! As a result I am on a high-fiber diet of mostly bran, with neither popcorn nor seeds nor nuts. That leaves out granola (mostly seeds and nuts). Madre drove me back around 11:30 a.m.; and it was all I could do to eat a sandwich before I took a nap for several hours until the drugs wore off.

Madre was kind to drive me there and back, because that afternoon she had to check into a hospital herself. She will be there over the weekend, so I will be tending to her cats and fixing my own Sunday dinner.

The all-liquids day was not a total loss. I have an annual evaluation coming up this month, so I spent the day compiling the appropriate documents. It takes that long because I need to pore through every work log entry for the past year in order to compile what I had done.

But I am not happy about losing the popcorn, because it is my favorite food.