Text 18849, 92 rader
Skriven 2014-11-03 10:04:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: hospital recap 188
==========================
It was Columbus day, a weekend of concerts and fun
on the Cape, where I started feeling a bit queasy,
and when the pains came, I got my buddy to drive
me up to Mass. General, where I was diagnosed with
acute perforated appendix and clapped in the unit.

They put me on the surgical service, which makes
sense, but the PIC decided that surgery was more
risky than the new gold standard, which is 2 weeks
of high-dose cipro and metronidazole followed by
an evaluation of whether the removal is needed.

It worked a charm, and they kicked me out in a
near-record two days. Wrong choice, as it turns out.

My food intake between October 13 and now.

Oct. 14, evening
chicken Marbella - hockey puck white meat in a
supposed wine sauce that the Hafflys would have
no problem with, lemons and capers

Oct. 15, morning
two boiled eggs

then out of stir! with Activity: no restrictions
Diet: no restrictions

So I went down the street to this place that used to
have decent food - Pierrot, started by the son of the
owners of Maison Robert, which for decades was the
premier French restaurant in New England, but then
they retired. It was the bistro atmosphere that I
yearned for, and good thing, as the menu didn't look
appetizing - all that appealed was moules frites or
steack tartare frites. I asked for the latter and was
asked how heat I wanted it; to my knowledge boeuf
tartare doesn't have any . Okay, I'll play the game.
Medium.

A normal tartare is a heap of raw beef, in book learning
tenderloin teased into crumbs with the back of a knife
but mostly these days ground or chopped fine; all
garnishes on the side, red onion, sieved egg, capers,
cornichons, maybe paprika, a raw egg yolk. I tend to
take it pretty plain, eating the meat mostly by itself
a bite of onion for contrast, then a couple capers or
cornichons to revive the palate. What came: a huge
mound of 1/2" chopped meat mixed with all of the
above ingredients (cornichons chopped) and Sriracha
sauce, a liberal dose. It was nasty, but I still ate
half of it. A glass of Bordeaux (a buck premium over
the Cabernet) came from, at best, Algeria.

I will admit that Jacky Robert abandoned the place for
some time, and the food is said to have taken a dive.
Dive is a kind word. Oh, well, the bread and butter
were good, and the waitress, who had not a syllable of
English, reasonably attentive and reasonably cute.

Last meal. Took the train to Wickford, where Rosemary
picked me up and made me an innocuous meal of braised
pork chop, rice, and spinach, which I could eat only
about a cupful of. That was my last solid food for five
days. I kept getting unbelievable reflux and promised
Rosemary I'd check myself in if I vomited. Kept up my
regimen of oral antibiotics, which in retrospect I
wonder if they actually went down.

To help my pills down, I would take sips of Silk or
teeny bites of coconut sorbet and heeded the advice
of my friends and the docs to stay well hydrated.

On the 5th day I vomited, projectilely, bilious green
gucka. Rosemary dutifully got me to the hospital,
where it was determined I had a paralytic ileus, which
is an intestinal stoppage usually caused by another
condition. As the appendicitis was well controlled,
this was a bit of a mystery, but a CAT showed a 4.5 cm
abscess - peritonitis that the body had walled off by
itself but still likely to pop and put bacteria back
into the system. Treatment: same as before, only IV
again. Stomach full of 9 lb of fluid, the normal
stomach holding somewhat less than that. This was
remedied by gentle suction over two or three days
using a nasogastric tube.

I was then NPO for 8 days.

___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Check Out Doc's QWK Mail  Via Web BBS > DocsPlace.org  (1:123/140)