The Bumpy Road to Recovery

I am grateful for the many calls, texts, emails, and visits wishing me a speedy recovery. I am also confident in a full recovery, but it is not going to be speedy. Each day, I am making progress with 1,000 or more steps, but to regain the strength I lost after 48 days in a hospital bed will take months.

I knew the road to recovery would be long, but I did not anticipate the bumps along the way. After discharge following the surgery plus five days of hospital recovery, I began to suffer a significant fever. After getting back to the emergency department, and being admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed with pneumonia plus multiple strains of infectious bacteria. After nearly a week of intravenous administration of two strong antibiotics, I was discharged to home again, this time with 10 days of two oral versions of the two powerful antibiotics. After four days, my reaction to the antibiotics was so severe I had to return to the emergency department. Again.

One of many things which got put on the back burner during my 45 days in the hospital was my work on book #8, My Life Attitude, an autobiography. One of the completed chapters is “Health”. I shared a lot about my health experiences over the years. I thought about updating the chapter with the latest but then decided it would add too much to the book. I am now contemplating book #9, name tbd, about my 80th year experiences. The story would not be just about me and my healthcare but about the dozens of fantastic nurses and patient care technicians. The dozens of doctors were impressive. So was the medical technology. It is a story I would never forget. Feedback on the idea welcome.

Epilogue – The image of the road to recovery was generated by my Perplexity AI for use in my blog post in August. I asked the AI to add some bumps in the road to reflect what is happening. Both articles were written by me.