Round 2 with Cellulitis, Day 2 – Texan In The Philippines

Thursday morning, day 2 in the hospital. I woke up at 0700. Nening & Titing (who stayed in the hospital with me) were gone. They had left about 0630 (I found out later). Nening needed to get back to work at our house. Titing then came back to the hospital. A ‘partner’ is necessary to help you with your needs. I guess it just means less for the hospital staff to do. I never got a reason for it, just assumed so.

I did get plenty of attention from nurses this morning. I had 5 of them around me for a while. It’s not because I’m so good-looking (although I am), but because my IV had stopped and they were looking for a vein to put in a new one. It seems it is hard to find veins on me. I have one good one for taking blood, but they didn’t want to use that one. Finally, after about 2 hours (they took a break in-between) a 6th nurse came in and found a suitable vein. It actually only took her about 2 minutes to find it. The other nurses and I let out cheers of joy for the accomplishment.

When Titing returned he brought my coffee. I used a very large traveling container that my cousin Dan bought for me before he came to visit. I had not used it so much before then, but I used it a lot during my hospital stay. Actually, I was just thinking that if I used that every morning for coffee, then I would only need that 1 coffee each morning. Maybe I’ll start doing that in the morning.

Later in the day, after Titing came back from lunch, I got more coffee, some chicken soup and a bottle of water. I still could not each very much and there was NO WAY I would be eating any of the hospital food they were brining to me. Titing and Nening got all that, every day I watched more tv while I was in the hospital than several months of tv watching at home. At least, in the Private Suite, they had cable and there were some choices to things to watch.

As 9 am rolled around I knew I was about to miss the expat beach cleanup we had scheduled. A lot of us expats volunteered to clean part of Malajog Beach. Plus, one of the expats that owns a scuba diving/kayak resort was going to let us try things out. I don’t think my big self would like kayaking very much, but I’ve always wanted to try out scuba diving. In fact, I just may take scuba diving lessons here pretty soon.

At my request, my wife showed up at the hospital. She doesn’t like to travel out and about much, but she came by because I needed to take a shower and with an IV stuck in my arm, that would not be an easy task. Even with her there, it was difficult to do. We made it through though. She then proceeded back home because she was not feeling so well either. Right before we started the shower, Dan showed up to visit (my 2nd visitor), but I kind of had to run him off early because of the taking a shower thing. I wish he would have come a little later because he was in the mood to play cribbage and I just happen to have the board there waiting.

My doctor came by to take a look at my legs. He said the antibiotics were working. We talked a bit and then he said again, they are working. As he was about to leave, he said, “It looks like they are working”. Whoa! Wait! Are they working or just “look” like they are working. For something like this it was pretty important to me that they actually were working. They were working. I noticed that some of the nurses would talk with the ‘partner’ you had with you, instead of you. Even though they speak pretty good English I think they are not all the comfortable using the language. I was sure to interrupt and ask if I thought the conversion was concerning me. Although the Filipino people are very friendly, customer service is a big problem in this country.

At bedtime I had 3 extra pillows brought from the house (to go along with the 2 I had there already and the 1 pillow the hospital provides). It’s not that I normally use so many pillows, but I had to put my legs up above my heart to keep the blood flowing throughout my body. Also, the way they had the bed positioned was not good for me. I already hurt my back a little last night just trying to sleep. Tonight, I had them flatten out the bed, foot of the bed raised just a little, and I put 3 of those pillows under my feet. There were 2 pillows under my head and 1 pillow in reserve that I normally use to put between my knees when I turn on my side during the night.

Off to sleep thinking how am I going to get my paycheck tomorrow and is the Cowboy game going to be on the tv in this room. I slept well anyway.

Salamat Y’all