last flowers to the hospital

It has been over two years since I last wrote something here. And holy shit it was two years that I won't forget anytime soon. I've been to concerts, played shows, bought way to many records and I mean actual records you know LPs, been in the hospital way to many times, became unemployed, bought more records, you get the idea. I guess we can go in chronological order. Spring of 2010 was rather uneventful, work, played shows, worked, repeat. The summer was good hot, but good. I went to see Spiritualized perform "Ladies and Gentleman We are Floating in Space" at Radio City Music Hall in NYC. I had only just gotten into them thanks to my coworker(who also got me into The Jesus Lizard) he had mentioned the show and asked if I was going but I hadn't bought tickets, his friend had originally said they were going then had to back down so I was up for the ticket, plus I don't mind driving while my coworker drinks. The best show I have ever been to hands down, no doubt whatsoever. It was just Spiritualized playing the record along with, a full choir and orchestra backing them. Absolutely amazing. I'm sure I shed a tear at some point in the set. No other concert can compare to that ever. The next few months were uneventful until around October. I was let go because business slows down in the winter months, but I am still in very good terms with my former employer, as soon as I can get around without assistents the boss said I could return. Then came November, I saw the original line-up of reunited Guided by Voices at Terminal 5 in NYC a great show but soon after that show I found out that the night before New Years Eve they were playing at Maxwells in Hoboken, a band that usually plays 1800 or more capacity venues was playing a 250 cap venue that I have also played at. Tickets were $75 so it took me a little while to decide If I wanted to throw down $150 for two tickets, so I thought about it for about 2 seconds and said absolutely yes. I offered the second to a friend from New Hampshire who I also took to see his first GBV show almost 6 years prior. He said yes so I was excited for this show. I was a bit under the weather(more about that later) but seeing my favourite band in such a small place was absolutely amazing. I think they played somewhere around 50 or more songs, but most of their songs are about a minute. So anyway, I spent that NYE at Neils with my friends from New Hampshire. January 3rd was my 29th birthday, and nothing eventful happened, I turned another year older. I wasn't feeling that great since about Thanksgiving and it can to a culmination about the 10th of January, the day I went into the hospital in the first time in over ten years. What I decided to do, and I don't recommend doing is stop taking my medicine as prescribed so I wound up rejecting my kidney. I am an idiot. I started hemo-dialysis right of way and I started feeling better. I was in the hospital for a few more days and went home. When I am on hemo-dialysis went go to a local dialysis clinic and got hooked up to a machine for 3-4 hours. The machine filtered my blood, something the kidney could no longer do for me. Their is also a pretty strict diet when on HD. I couldn't eat many foods with Phosphorus or very salty foods and I was on a fluid restriction not being able to drink more than 32 ounces of fluid a day, or I would retain a lot of fluid and become a little bloated with extra fluid. Things were getting back to normal but I didn't like hemo-dialysis, the clinic was rather depressing and It actually took up a lot of my time. I really didn't mind but by the time I drove there, had my treatment and drove home it would take six hours out of my day. Plus if I made it permanent I would have a fistula in my arm and be stuck with two needles three times a week, which isn't really my idea of a good time. I decided to switch to peritoneal dialysis. On peritoneal dialysis I have a catheter in my abdomen and 10 hours a night it fills, dwells, fills, a continuos cycle. The amount of fluid and how many cycles I do depends on the prescription my doctor gave me. The nice thing about PD is that I have my days free and I don't have to go to the depressing dialysis center. The other thing I like about PD is that it is easier to travel with it. Also the diet is much more liberal since you do PD every night. The summer was rather uneventful until the end of June. I have bad knees and hips because one of the medications I have been on since my first kidney transplant(1988). This medication over time causes bone decay in the joints, especially the knees and hips. I have actually had about two pieces of bone about the size of a quarter taken out of my right knee. So at the end of June my right hip was bothering me more than usual and I figured it was time to see the doctor and schedule a hip replacement. I finally got to the doctor and got a surgery date of October 5th of 2011. Up until the surgery I continued playing with the band and going on with my life as normal as possible. Then came surgery day, a Wednesday. The surgery went well, no complications. I was moved to a room and the next day the Physical Therapists had me up and putting weight on my new hip. The next day was the same with some walking and other leg exercises. This routine continued until Saturday. I was moved to a rehab facility to continue my healing and getting the new hip to work. Not much happens on the weekend in rehab so I basically sat in my bed. The following Monday my mom came in to check on me and I wasn't feeling well. It turned out that I had a fever. I was sent back to Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune to see if they could figure out what caused the fever. As days progressed I got less and less coherent. I had lost most of my appetite and was barely eating anything. Most of this I don't remember which is probably a good thing. Around this time the doctors were still trying to figure out what exactly was wrong with me. I was getting sicker and sicker as the days passed. It got to the point that the doctors decided it was best for me to be intubated so they could put me on a ventilator to help me breathe. They moved me from a regular floor to the Intensive Care Unit(ICU). I was in a coma for around 15 days and woke up around a week before Thanksgiving. I don't know if I subconsciously heard things around me or if it was just my brains imagination but I remember dreams that I had. The main ones that I remember was being on the beach in Aruba and skiing down a mountain in Alaska. I also dreamt that I escaped the hospital and that my dad chopped of his toe with an axe. The "dream" that I remember the most was when a women told me "don't do this" I'm not quite sure what that meant, and I still don't. I don't really remember that much else from the coma. While in the coma, and I was showing symptoms of this before they intubated me was I also went septic, which means pretty much all your organs shut down. My blood pressure kept going lower and lower and that is one of the first symptoms of septic shock. I just kept getting sicker and sicker until they figured out what was wrong with me. I ended up having a fungal infection that anyone with a normal immune system wouldn't even know they were sick, but since my immune system is so compromised it really made me sick. I remember parts of this and also when the Doctor came in to tell me they would intubate me. I'm not sure if I signed a consent but I am sure I did and I can't imagine my hand writing being any good. But I'm sure that didn't matter. When I woke up they took the tube out of my throat. I still had an IV line in my neck and they had to change the type of dialysis I was doing so I had a catheter in the vein in my leg. When I was unconscious I had a feeding tube in my nose, to my stomach. At that point I still could't eat solid foods, so I was on a liquid diet. I started with applesauce and jello and eventually ate real food. I started to eat solid foods again....slowly but surely and the first real meal back was my on my sisters birthday, it was homemade spagetti and meatballs, and It was delicious. My circulatory system was not working well so I ended up developing a dry gangrene on some of my toes. I also had developed bed sores on the back of both my feet and on my sacrum. Because of the bedsores the doctors ordered me a special bed that had sand in it and it moved around so there wasn't always pressure on my wounds. It was a horrible bed and I even had a panic attack in it, and it was horrible. I also eventually had three toes amputated, the two big toes and one pinky toe, but that happened after I was out of the hospital. I left the hospital on December 6th, two months and a day since I went in for my hip replacement. I went to rehab in Wall Township to learn to walk again and get better. I went to dialysis three days a week and the other days I had physical therapy in the mornings. It wasn't that bad, but learning to walk again was difficult and on top of that the pain on somedays was pretty unbearable. So Christmas came and I was still pretty under the weather. I spent Christmas in rehab and my birthday, which was one hell of a way to spend your 30th birthday. I had a little party in my room and a bunch of friends came so that was nice, it was good to see them. The following weeks were the same, therapy and dialysis, a constant cycle of boringness and being around people who you feel like you have nothing in common with. I did have visitors and on my birthday(Jan 3rd) We were supposed to go to Applebees but I was feeling sore so everyone came to my room. I spent another month in the rehab and was released on Feb. 4th. I continued therapy at home and tried to get things back to normal. It was still difficult for me to get around so I was in a wheelchair and used a walker. Things started to get back to normal. I eventually started driving again, going back to band practice and generally socializing more. It felt great. I got to the point were I didn't need a wheelchair anymore. I had my toes amputated(as mentioned before). After that I wanted to go back to Peritoneal Dialysis. So I had the surgery in July and was able to start PD in August. My brother got married in August and I was the best man. I continued going to band practice and physical therapy. And besides not having a job right now things are back to a fairly normal schedule.