Home after 16.5 days in the hospital. Tonight, I sleep without being awakened for scheduled doses of drugs I may or may not need. Tomorrow, I bum around the apartment and cook dinner for Carrie. Anyway, the last “hospital” update unless things suddenly go south, and I really hope they don’t. Here’s the letter I …
Author Archives: Jonathan Sterne
Cancer Crawl Feb 27th
I’m now getting so close to out that I can taste it. Literally. Today, after a visit from a resident and signing a liability waiver for the hospital, I was let out on a day pass with an 8pm curfew. Of course all I did was go home but the drive through the city was …
Cancer Crawl Feb 26th
Today was the big day: around 7:30am the residents (not the band) came by and removed my trache. In its place are some stitches, though they don’t close the hole perfectly. So there is still some healing to be done and i need to be observed for a few nights. But overall it feels great. …
Cancer Crawl Feb 25th
After all the talk of corking, there was no cork. I wore tape all day, gradually re-learning to breathe through my nose and mouth without the help of an extra airway (I was allowed to remove the tape if I couldn’t get enough air). As I mentioned last night, the difficulty is not breathing in …
Cancer Crawl Feb 24th
This one will be brief as I’m beat. This morning, they tried to “cork” me, which is what it sounds like. You put a “cork” in the trach tube to force beeathing through the nose and mouth only. I had a hard time breathing out–probably because my trach is still pretty big. Later in the …
Cancer Crawl, Feb 23rd
Today I spoke for the first time since February 12th. Technically that’s not true since in the ICU they got a “1 2 3 4” out of me on the 15th but I was under heavy sedation. Apart from that, I have been communicating with a pad of paper and with keyboard devices when given …
Cancer Crawl Feb 22nd
I just downloaded WordPress for iPhone. They do think of everything, don’t they? For better or worse, I have settled into a routine here. Part of that is coercive– no full blinds and they come and wake you up at all hours, because in hospitals theories of pharmacology trump those of sleep. But I am …