The Long Road Ahead (pt 5)

At this point, I'd been in the hospital for almost four weeks - a little over one week at Houston Medical and going on three at Emory. For me to be discharged, we had a few things to accomplish. First, I had to be taken off the morphine pump and manage my pain with oral medication. Second, they needed to make sure my oxygen levels were alright without the use of an oxygen tank. Third, a physical therapist needed to evaluate me to make sure I was able to get out of the bed and at least move around (with or without assistance).

The Long Road Ahead (pt 4)

This is taking longer to tell than I thought. I'm going to try to wrap this up in this part or the next, mainly because everything in the hospital after this point is a blur. The combination of pain medication and other drugs I was on, in addition to how much I was trying to sleep and the onset of cabin fever (I was at 3 weeks and I wanted to go home badly), made my memory very spaced out.

The Long Road Ahead (pt 3)

While I was in the hospital, I was on many medications and painkillers. As such, my memory is a bit fuzzy with some of the events that occurred. In my previous post, I made a couple errors. The x-ray didn't show the fractures, but it did show degeneration, scoliosis, and a decrease in bone density. They admitted me to the hospital because of that because they wanted to run more tests. It wasn't until the MRI that they noticed the compression fractures. When they mentioned the possibility of bone metastases, the decision was made to transfer to Emory.