With the light blocked by dark clouds everywhere and too many hours spent locked up in the hospital, I thought it was close to dinnertime when the doctor came to see me yesterday. It was shortly after two. The doctor wanted to discuss my current state and, as I hoped, release me to go home. I felt ok. My digestion wasn’t 100% stable, but it hadn’t been all week. I felt hints of pain from various parts of my lower abdomen, nothing I could place and nothing that worried me. The doctor didn’t say anything about the liver. I assumed everything was within expectations.
I have learned that good news doesn’t deserve explicit mention. Ambiguity even less so. The doctor focused on something concrete, worrisome. Some pancreas markers had apparently shown up in my blood at high levels. This meant nothing to me, but the doctor was concerned enough not to let me go home. “I don’t want you to wake up with pain in the middle of the night and have to come back here”, she said. I would have to stay for at least one more night. “If the markers are down tomorrow”, she continued, “you can go home”. There was no mention of treatments in case of a deterioration.
Flucha did some medical searching at home. This is what builds expertise, apparently. It’s not uncommon for the pancreas to take a bit of a hit after the procedure I had undergone. The organ usually sorts itself out with time. One day might not be enough to see an effect. My chances of sitting out the weekend in the hospital were increasing. Before she left, the doctor had one more thing to say: “I’ll place you on another fast to give pancreas and liver time to recover.
Fasting is not something I enjoy, but this time I didn’t mind at all. Lunch was still lying heavily in my stomach. I didn’t have the feeling that digestion was progressing much. I wouldn’t have wanted anything for dinner. At night, I went in and out of sleep, always wondering what’s going on in my guts. It takes more to digest food than a stomach and intestines. There’s a reason for all the other organs lingering in the vicinity.
This morning, I still had a log in my guts, but now this feeling could equally be explained by hunger. It’s curious how being stuffed and being hungry can feel so similar. Shortly after lunchtime, another doctor stopped by to check up on me. He didn’t have much to say. Some blood values were good, others less so. The only prospect he put in the room was food. He’d need to run this by a more experienced doctor, he said. There was no way of my being released today.
When I was in the hospital for the hemicolectomy last September, my last two days also fell on a weekend. It was a different feeling. I enjoyed the calm days and my vastly improved physical state. I took walks outside. Now I’m getting annoyed. What am I still doing here? All they do is check my blood, my blood pressure and give me blue potassium pills a few times a day. I don’t feel like a patient.
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