L'hopital rule, part 3: l'hopital proper

[wjl]

Continuing the chronicle of how i wound up in the hospital for all of Memorial Day weekend -- and pausing first to note that i'm happy, healthy, and okay right now, that all this happened in the past, though not too distantly -- recall that Friday night i had strange Vicodin-induced dreams of swallowing a lot, which upon waking i realized were

Comments

[joshua_]

Your writing style is amusing to read; it brings back memories of the many evenings I spent in hospitals in my youth (which, although not amusing, are certainly things worth remembering). Thanks for writing!

I am interested by your relative risk assessments: if I were asked to take a diagnostic scan, and I'd not been having them regularly, I would not object in the slightest to being cooked (as long as the appropriately sensitive components are shielded with lead), but I have a relatively strong aversion to antibiotics.

I think that working for Swallow Co. would be interesting for a half hour or so, but after that, it would probably get pretty unpleasant.

[wjl]

Glad you're enjoying it :) Thanks for the note..

Re: risks: the thing about the radiation is that it's lifetime cumulative, so i really feel like i oughta make each one count. And the question Lizzie brought up in particular was: would the results of the scan affect the treatment, or were they going to go ahead with some particular course of action regardless? For antibiotics, i feel like i have a clearer sense of their utility -- when what you've got going on is a bacterial infection run amok, it's pretty obvious that antibiotics are the required treatment. I'm pretty hesitant about antibiotics in general, to keep overall resistance down, but when they're the right choice, they're really the right choice..

Whence your aversion to antibiotics?

I think with the Vicodin, i probably got about three hours of entertainment out of Swallow Co., but yeah, the novelty definitely wore off pretty quickly upon waking :P

[lindseykuper]

Thanks for writing all this up! I'm confused about what "the Kraken" is, though. Um, a diabetic cat?

[wjl]

Yes, exactly :) My friend Brian's diabetic cat, who lives in an apartment named Skyland.

Thanks for reading!