Maybe Mother Was Right or Maybe I Was

I began reading well before I began Kindergarten, and I started Kindergarten a few months after turning 4 years old. I read a lot all through my school years, and then for the rest of my life. It bothered my family that I was such a voracious reader and when I was a teenager, my mother said I read too much.

"It is going to wear out your brain," she warned on more than one occasion.

But I didn't listen to my mom and kept on devouring books. I usually had four or five books going during any given week and when no books were handy, I read what was. At breakfast I would read everything on the cereal box.

As I aged I was relatively healthy. The older I got I seemed to have even less problems with such nuisances as colds or the flu. I racked up perfect attendance awards at work regularly. People would ask how I stayed so well I answered:

"The secret to good health is to stay away from doctors."

If I hadn't heeded my mothers advice, I did honor my own and I only went to a doctor if I felt like I was hanging on Death's door. At age 74 I was walking 5 miles or more each morning, rain or snow, in season and out. I exercised at the gym 3 times a week and many evenings found me working out on a rowing machine at home. I had gotten my weight down through this and diet, where I avoid much sugar and ate a lot of fresh fruit. My Physical exams at the doctor were usually very good.

Ah, but there is the rub, "At the doctor".

I had kept doctor visits to a bare minimum most my life, but when I got into my sixties, and especially on Medicare, it seemed I was required to take a yearly physical. I had to check in order to have my blood pressure and my thyroid medication renewed or adjusted. Then a few years ago it  it became a bi-annual exam.  I asked my doctor about this one time and she said it was due to regulations put in by President Obama.  Hmmm, okay, but now it seems I have been scheduled in every 4 months.

And the more exams presumptively to keep me healthy, the more prickly my health has become. My doctor prescribed an antibiotic for some sniffles and it gave me Clostridium difficile or C. Diff, a particularly nasty disease. But I have written several posts about my struggles with this. The main problem is what happened in late May on one of my walks. Suddenly, my legs felt odd, kind of weak, and I had difficulty continuing.

This drove me to the doctors voluntarily and led to several months

now of various specialists and many tests, blood tests, cat scans, ultrasounds, MRIs and most recently, an EMG or electromyogram, which included a series of electrical shocks to my arm and leg, followed by a number of needles being inserted in the same arm and leg. Such fun times!

However, to date, no one has figured out what it is I have and I am supposed to see a sub-specialist because the EMG shows something not quite right with my nerves.

In the Neurologist's waiting room was a magazine with an article on the importance of self-diagnosis with mystery diseases. I am now wondering if I have stumbled on what I have and this brings me back to my mother's warning.

Here are my symptoms: An odd-gait, weakness in my arms and legs, unsteady balance, fatigue, problems making decisions, becoming disorganized (organization being one of my past strongpoints) and lapses in memory (memory also being a former strongpoint). These all fit the symptom of Leukoaraiosis or Small Vessel Disease.

What is this exactly? Well, until very recently no one realized such a thing existed. It wasn't until the prevalent use of imaging technology, the Cat Scans and MRIs, that it was discovered and now some believe upward of 60% of older people might be affected. It showed up in these scans as little pinpricks of white scattered about the cerebellum. It was finally determined this was what is called small vessel disease. 

It is basically a lack of oxygen getting into some of the small vessels that run throughout the brain. No one really knows the cause yet. There is some correlation to high blood pressure and diabetes. I don't have diabetes, but I've had high blood pressure most my life and have taken controlling medication for it. My blood pressure readings are very good.

Obviously, the motor skills can be interfered with, thus ataxic gait. I have been having problems with focus and definitely a growing number of memory lapses. (I really need to speed up writing my memoirs before I forget everything. The scary part of this is it can progress to vascular dementia.

What leads me to think this may be my problem? It was because I remembered the term small vessel disease from somewhere in all my medical adventures, and sure enough, there it was in the report by my Neurosurgeon.

"MRI of the brain performed 7/7/2016 demonstrates periventricular white matter disease consistent with small vessel ischemic disease as well as some diffuse atrophy of the brain."

This can be treated with the possibility of complete reversal, but first somebody other than myself needs come up with the diagnosis. You know what is always said, the faster you identify the problem the better the odds of cure. However, my cast of doctors are really dragging their feet. I was told that sub-specialist would call either last Wednesday or Thursday to set an appointment. No call came. I called the Neurologist office inquiring this morning, but as of two o'clock no one has returned my call. 

Or perhaps my mother was right all those years ago and my excessive reading simply wore out my brain.

What is Hopefully My Final Escape

Yippee ki yay, I'm back on the bedpan again!

But by the fourth day I was no longer suffering that old C. Diff diarrhea. I was actually feeling much better and this was the day they let me bathe myself.

More importantly to me, was at the 7:00 AM staff change. My night nurse brought in the new day shift nurse as they did at every shift change. It was a man, the one and only male nurse I was to have at Christiana Hospital after a long line of female nurses. I immediately perked up, not because I had something for male nurses, but because when I had been in Wilmington Hospital I had but one male nurse as well and he came on duty the morning of my last day there.  Could history repeat and this be my day of discharge from Christiana? I took this as a promising omen.

I began my morning with a series of doctors paying me a visit, Manny, Moe and Jack; or was it Moe, Larry and Curly? No, one

was a lady from the Infectious Disease Center because yes, I had an infectious disease, one they told me was very much so. Anyone coming into my room first had to don a gown and gloves as a precaution. She explained to me that I could get the C. Diff again going forward, it was a stubborn disease and it would forever be a part of my life, like some sneaky criminal lurking in the shadows of my bowels. There was no real cure either and nothing I could do or eat that would prevent it if it choose to strike again. All this because my Primary Physician had put me on an antibiotic for sniffles. Curse you, Cefdiner!  (That's the antibiotic, not my doctor.)

Not long after she left, Dr. Wetherill popped in. He was the attending physician for the hospital. Because of the similarity in the names,  I kept wanting to call him Mr. Weatherbee, the principal from the Archie Comics. Actually, he even looked a bit like Mr. Weatherbee. He told me they were considering discharging me either today or on Saturday. He asked me how I felt about it.

I told him I would love to go home today.

Did I feel strong enough to go home?

Yes, I felt strong enough.

He left with a "We'll consider it."

Consider it well, in fact, put on your Nikes and just do it. 

I called my wife and told her I might be coming home and I'd call her when I knew anything for sure.

Sometime around noon the nurse came in and told me I was being discharged in about a half hour. He took out my IV, which entailed more ripping off of tape and hair. He noted who ever put it on was a bit of a sadist. It used to be a sign of virility for a man to have hairy arms and chest and I guess I was a viral man, but boy it hurt to have tape ripping off that hair. If I want a wax job, I'll go to a salon.

I called my wife again and the phone rang and rang until the voice mail came on. I hung up and tried again. It took 4 tries before my wife answered. She sounded weary and said she had been trying to unclog the vacuum. She sounded so upset I didn't even think to ask her to bring me fresh clothes. I fished through a paper bag on my counter and put on what I had worn into the hospital, shorts and a T-shirt, but still better than the open-backed gown.

I didn't want a repeat of when we left Wilmington Hospital and she  had to wait in the heat because they couldn't find a wheelchair to bring me down. I told her when the wheelchair came I wanted her to go down with me and then get the car. However, things did not go so smoothly this time either.

When the nurse came in to go over my discharge instruction and have me sign the release paper, I asked if he would order the Vancomycin (oh yum, I get to drink that poison four times a day even when I get home) from the pharmacy so we could pick it up on the way out. He did so. He came back and said it would take an hour to prepare, we could wait in the room where we had TV or we could go down and wait in the hallway outside the pharmacy. We choose to stay in the room.

My wife does not have much patience with waiting. The hour seemed to never end and she was getting more and more annoyed, but then the nurse came in and said the hour had passed and he was ordering up a wheelchair.

My escort appeared right behind him, a young lady named Poon. The three of us set off for my exit. Poon then rolled me into the pharmacy and Lois left us to get the car.

Poon assisted in my buying the bottle, which cost $124 because it was not covered by any insurance, and then she rolled me out to the large window fronting the pick up area. 

There we waited and waited, but then a man came up and told her he would watch me. He was the traffic director for the pickup place. Since it was a nice day, he rolled me outside and there we waited and waited.

And waited.

It was like the Philadelphia Airport, car after can pulled in to pick up the recently discharged, but no sign of our red Fit. We waited there, although the guy went off to aid some other people occasionally, while I grow more and more panicked.

I know she walks slow, but even at her pace she should have reached Parking Lot B long ago and it was not a long drive from there to here. Where was she? Christiana Care is a large complex with multi-lanes throughout the parking lot, perhaps she was lost. Or what if she went to the wrong exit?

I asked the guy if there were other entry/exits. At first he said no, but after a bit of prodding it seemed there were at least four: the heart division, but that was just down the driveway in our sight and she would have had to drive past where we were to get there. There was the Emergency Room, where we had originally entered, but I really didn't think she would go there. Then their were two other smaller points.

What if she went to one of those? How would I contact her if she was sitting at pint B and I was at Point A? For that matter, how would I contact her if she were lost in the parking lots? The guy asked about a cell phone. First of all, I thought mine had gone home with her after they admitted me. Second, I didn't think she ever set up her phone when we got new ones a couple months previously, and if she had and had it in her purse, I wasn't sure she would answer it.

It was growing later and I pictured myself sitting alone in my wheelchair as the sun set. I was really wondering how we would ever hook up again when suddenly she came around the bend into the pickup area.

She was pretty frazzled.

We left and I again told her to pull over and let me drive.

She was very upset and blamed the problem on construction they were doing at the hospital. She couldn't turn up the drive she wanted and then she did get lost in the confusion of lots, eventually ending up out on the main road heading toward I-95. She turned around and still had trouble finding the proper lane to the pickup point. 

I kidded about it being like the mazes they use to feature in the children's books, like "Highlight's" and "Jack and Jill" when we were kids.

She didn't really see the humor in it.

I didn't care. I was heading home again, hopefully for good this time. I had no desire to return back to either hospital.

Deja Vu All Over Again

 I had arrived home from my Endoscopy and I felt pretty well. My Home Health Nurse, Leo, showed up in the afternoon and ran the usual check of my vitals. He looked at me and said,
"do you know you have a 101 fever?"

No, I didn't. He took out his phone and called the doctor. He got done talking then told me I was to immediately go to the emergency ward. They thought something had happened during my procedure, like a tear or infection.

So we headed down I-95, my wife driving, but this time we passed Wilmington. I had decided I wanted to go to Christiana Hospital instead. Wilmington and Christiana Hospitals are all part of Christiana Care, but the big complex at Christiana is the mother ship.

We came around and up in front of the emergency ward. I was struggling a bit, but there was no one coming to help. Some people were standing around, but none moved to do anything. This was ticking Lois off and she was none to quiet about it. I went on in and she left to park the car.

I went to the check in window, but the lady there told me to go over to a window to my right. A guy came over and took my info. he told me to go through a gate into the back just as Lois arrived.  We did as he said and I was ushered into a little exam room where further questions were asked and then we were sent into the main waiting room.

There we sat doing what the room was for -- waiting. Lois has no

patience for waiting. She was complaining, in no uncertain terms, and finally got up and went to inquire. Of course, this did little good, but finally my name was called and I was once again in a little curtained exam room, where it was decided to admit me. They wheeled me off in a wheelchair and Lois took some of my things and left for home.

Different hospital, I was now entrapped in Christiana Hospital instead of Wilmington Hospital, but other than the location everything else was familiar. The bed was the same padded prison with the same alarms and the same discomforts. Like before the phone was out of my reach and the window was too distant to look out at the grounds. The TV was the same with its difficult to use control screen. There was a different set of nurses and aids and technicians, but they did the same procedures. One of them put an IV in my left arm, but they did not put a second one in my other arm this time. I guess we can count that as different. Each morning the vampire came by to draw vials of blood, although this one did have a sense of humor. I was injected in the stomach twice a day as before and fed that evil Vancomycin four times a day.


And the raging diarrhea was back, I was having my second bout with Clostridium difficile, or C. Diff as they called it for convenience sake. So I was wearing only the very exposing thin gown with the open back and riding the bedpan once more.

By the third day, once again, the diarrhea had lessened and they were allowing me to walk over to a commode chair when my bowels moved. It was all routine to me now. 

One thing was definitely different and welcome. This nurse asked if I would like to bathe. Oh, yes, indeed I would. I had spent 5 days in Wilmington Hospital without any such thing as a bath or shower. Now I pictured a scene from Seinfeld (the whole world can be defined by Seinfeld scenes). George was visiting his mother in the hospital and behind him was a curtain hiding the other occupant of the room. Suddenly a beautiful nurse appeared saying she had come to give the patient a spong bath. You saw just the dark silhouettes behind the curtain.

This is what I pictured in my mind: A beautiful nurse comes in with a washpan and strips off my gown to wash me with a sponge. Ah, the kind of fantasy I had when a teenager. Of course, the reality was not quite living up to the imagination. A nurse, who was perfectly fine looking, did come in with a washpan, but she continued into the bathroom. She then pushed a chair into there and came and got me out of bed. 

I waddled into the bathroom and the washpan of hot water and a washcloth were in the sink before the chair. I was left alone then to wash myself. There was the hot water and soft washcloth and body wash and lotion on the counter. I stripped and did that warm wash ever feel good. There was even a glass holding a fresh toothbrush, toothpaste and mouth wash for me, which I made use of and then I dried off and slipped on a clean, fresh gown that was hung on the back of the door.

I called out I was finished, but got no answer, so I walked out to the bed myself. My room was empty of anyone else, but as soon as I sat on the bed alarms rang out and the nurse quickly appeared.

Each shift change the nurse that had been in charge would come in to introduce the next head nurse. On the fourth morning, at 7:00 AM when this occurred I was introduced to a male nurse, the only male nurse I had that week. I took this as a good omen. I had one male nurse during my imprisonment at Wilmington Hospital and he was the one on duty with I was released.  Could it happen again?


To Be Continued...

Up from the Valley of C. Diff and Death

You see that window behind me? That might as well have been another world during my first three days. I could see little outside and I had no idea what it looked out over. I was growing curious about it, but it might as well been on Mars. I couldn't get to it even though it couldn't have been more than 25 feet away.

But on my fourth day of imprisonment a new face appeared by my side. She introduced herself as a Physical Theropist and she asked if I would like to take a walk.

You bet your bippy, whatever a bippy may be. It is certainly a word the spell check doesn't like. It changed my first bippy to tippy and my second to hippy.

She disconnected my IV from the pole and I slid off the side of the bed to my feet. She turned off the alarm. She asked if I wanted the walker, but I told her I could manage on my own two feet. She did put a strap about my chest so she could grip me in the back if needed to keep me upright. I asked if we could walk by the window.

I was a little wobbly, but I really didn't need her to hold me as we walked a few circles about the room and past the window. Ah, how nice to see outside. My room was facing the West. I could see the WTC Plaza, the last building I worked in at Wilmington Trust. (I guess it is called M&T Plaza, now.) Over on the left was the Washington Street Ale House and straight ahead was the parking garage.
Directly below the window was the pickup and drop-off circle before the main entrance.

Off to the right was the cemetery, something I always joked was not what you want to see from your hospital room, a too near reminder of where you might end up. I had never dreamed I would be the patient gazing out at it.

It had felt good to walk about again, but it didn't rescue me from the commode chair. I though I could use the bathroom like a big boy now, but every thing that emptied out of my body had to be eyeballed and examined by the nurse before being flushed away.

They were checking the content of the potty for consistency and color and somewhat the same with the bottles of urine. I believe they marked down the amount of urine and one time the nurse mentioned it was too light, it needed to be darker, like I controlled the hue.

My Pastor and his wife, Karen, showed up for a visit, so someone got the word to them of what had

happened to me, probably my daughter had posted something online. They said they knew something was wrong when I didn't come to the church picnic on Sunday. I always go to most church events if only to take some photographs. I had just not felt up to it the past Sunday. Pastor Randy Scott brought me a balloon of a silly looking monkey with a "Hang in There" banner on it. That thing floated around the room the rest of my stay like a stray Angel watching over me.

On the fifth day, when the shift changed at 7:00 AM, the night Nurse brought the new day Nurse in to be introduced. This was the ritual at every shift change. This time was a bit different for the Day Nurse was male, the first and only male nurse I had the entire time. Keep this in mind. The doctor came in and announced they were discharging me later in the day. Yay, I was going home. I called my wife and told her to come and get me around midday and bring me some clothes. All I had was the open back gown and I didn't see myself exiting back into the world just wearing that, even though I was certain half of Wilmington had seen my nether regions by then.

The nurse came in and ripped off my tapes and took out the IVs.  My wife came in, looking very bleary eyed. The Nurse gave me the discharge papers for signing and a copy for myself along with a prescription for Vancomycin. He told me a wheelchair would be there soon to roll me out. They never let you walk out of a hospital, they have to ride you to the front door. Heaven forbid you should fall and sue.

My wife left to get the car and bring it to the pickup circle. I waited for my escort. I could see out the window my wife going up the elevator in the parking garage and then after a few minutes our Red Honda Fit winding its way down the levels to the street.

I still waited for my wheelchair lift.

Meanwhile, another lady approached me and set up my home health care.      

And I returned to waiting and waiting for the wheelchair. The nurse told me it would come soon, there had been a little problem getting one.

Time ticked away. I began to feel nervous because I knew Lois would be getting upset at this delay. I had no idea how upset.

The chair finally appeared and whisked me down and out to the front and up to the door of our car. I could see my wife was fuming. I got in and she began ranting about the situation. It was a hot day and she was sweltering. The Valet had harassed her, telling her she couldn't park there. She told him she was picking up her husband, but he kept eyeing her there after. She took off in her fury. She was going out the exit a bit too fast, stopping a little too short behind other traffic, and when we turned down the street to the ramp onto I-95, she missed the ramp somehow and was headed down a street into what is called Happy Valley. Right then there was not a lot of happiness. I told her to pull over and let me drive. I thought in her state she would get us killed or back in the hospital.

Part of the problem was the heat and the fact she hadn't been able to sleep the night before, an ongoing problem she has. She was too tired and upset to be driving. She calmed down after I took the wheel and we headed home thinking I was safe and secure from this blasted C. Diff. How little I knew about the disease.

On the Third Day the Waters Receded

By the dawning of day three, the diarrhea had slowed down. None of the jabbing and stabbings had, though. I was still awakened early by the vampire, who unlike the legends, disappeared as night fell and reappeared as the sun rose. She called me to wakefulness, standing over me with her trusty kit of butterfly needle and tubes.

The twice daily injections in my belly continued as well, as did that great bitter elixir of Vancomycin four times daily.

A doctor came in this morning, asked me my name, date of birth and if I knew where I was. He then asked me the day and date and I think even who the Presidents was. Wasn't I sick enough without that reminder? He then explained what I had and told me he had ordered a cat scan of my head. Why? The diarrhea wasn't in my head.

Once more I went on a joy ride down the corridors; a lot of corridors. I was wheeled into an elevator and I noticed he pushed the button for sub-basement 3. I was being transported down into the bowels of the Earth.

So into this basement far, far away we went. There were more corridors, but we weren't dodging anyone, they were basically empty. He rolled me up to a door that said Xray, stopped, mumbled something about it being occupied and then wheeled me in reverse down the corridor, turned a corner, went down another ing hallway and me placed along the wall in what appeared to be a kind of storage area.

And he left me there.

What a bleak feeling this proved to be. There was no one about. I was in this desolate place somewhere deep in the guts of the hospital. I had no means of contact, no means of escaping the gurney and if I did, how would I find my way back to civilization? How far could I walk anyway in my weakened state and almost naked body? I lay there and lay there feeling quite deserted, wondering if I would be forgot. An indeterminable amount of time passed before another orderly showed up and rolled me back the halls and into the Cat Scan room.

The young lady running the equipment was very nice and commiserated with me. She said they use to park the gurneys right outside the door in such circumstances, but then there was a change of policy and it was off to that storage alcove. She didn't particularly like it either and understood my discomfort.

The Cat Scan didn't take long and it is not as intimidating as an MRI, since the machine is more open and wider. You don't feel like you have been placed in a tomb. By this time, I had racked up 4 MRIs, 4 Cat Scans and several Ultrasounds over a month and a half.

Back in my room I began to contemplate the possibility I would never get out of the place or worse, be carted off to a Rehabilitation Home. I still had no means of communication and didn't know if anyone knew where I was. There was a phone in the room, I discovered, but it was clear over on the far side, much out of my reach.

Things were improving, relatively speaking. For one, the nurses decided I could try using a commode chair rather than a bedpan. All I had to do was prove I could stand up and walk a few feet to the chair.
They had wrestled it out of the bathroom, after a brief struggle because it seemed somehow entangled with the shower stall. They placed it up against the curtain that separated my present domain from the hallway.  The chair sat about 6 feet from my bed.

Although, they offered to help, I did manage to sit on the side of my bed and then plop my feet to the floor and stand. Of course, this set off the alarm bells like it was New Year's Eve. They turned off the alarm and followed me with the IV pole over to the commode, when I parted the gown and sat.  They handed me the call button and said ring when I was done.

It was loose and watery, but it did not go on forever as before and soon I called them back. They cleaned me up , changed the pads on the bed and once again I was absconded in my prison until the next call of nature.

A nurse told me my daughter had called, so now the home front had some information and knew where I was. The only problem was they told my daughter I was septic and she asked my wife if I was going to die. Actually, I learned later, I had come very close to dying.

When the doctor had been in during the morning he said he was putting me on a clear diet. Clear of flavor, I guess. I received a tray contains milk, hot tea, orange juice and this covered dish, which when revealed contained some sort of hot white substance. I took a spoonful and it was like paste. I didn't eat more. I think it was Cream of Wheat. It came again in a later meal and was a bit closer to edible after I spread some sugar over it. I kept getting drinkable things, apple juice, milk, even some coffee along with chocolate pudding, which has never been a favorite.

I think they are trying to starve me.

Sirens, Sheets and Plastic Shackles

I was at the mercy of the hospital staff now. As previously told, I was hauled on the gurney through hallways and passages and the haunted forests and plunked down in a bed.

Actually, it is kind of cool to be pushed down those hallways. Kind of a amusement park ride. It seemed as if the Orderlies, if such people are still called that, moved quite fast, finessing the corners without a bump and missing any blurry passerby.  (I believe at one point of my stay I heard the nurse call for a transport specialist, but perhaps I was partially delireous.)

That had been the first of several such adventures rides I would experience.

I can remember the next events, but not necessarily in order. It is like trying to catalogue the

landscape while inside a whirlwind. I know a nurse came in and she put an infusion hookup in my right arm. This is part of what is commonly referred to as an IV. It is the part plugged into the patient via a needle. There is a little short hose of a connector attacked that can be plugged into the IV tubing.

I hate needles, but nonetheless, for good measure or just for the heck of it maybe, she put an infusion hookup in my left arm, too. They never really did anything with the left one after that. What was it, for, Balance?

Anyway, she did hang a bag of something on the pole and run a tube from it to my right arm. I was now tethered to my bed by a plastic chain.

Another uniformed lady appeared, jammed a butterfly needle in my arm and drew out four vials of blood.

I did mention I hate needles, didn't I?

A technician then came in and did an ultrasound. I can't recall if it were my chest or stomach. I only know no needles were involved.

Then they all left me alone, but not for long. They had hardly stepped out until I rang for the nurse. It was bedpan time. I'm not sure if I ever used a bedpan before in my life, but it sure became a fixture now every quarter hour  for  the next couple or so days. It was an easy on and off, because all I had been left wearing was this thin hospital gown with the air conditioned back. It was only tied up at the neck, so it was definitely quick open; frankly it was sort of never closed. The bedpan itself was like a saddle, you kind rocked along with the flow, if you know what I mean.

Man, I was hit with terrible floods of diarrhea. I can see why people die from it. Unattended, you would probably suffer rapid dehydration. I understand part of whatever was in the IV was for the purpose of keeping liquids in my body.

I kind of hate putting people out if I can do it myself. The bathroom didn't look far away and I got it in my head I could make it in there. As my Pastor often says, "Br-r-r-k! Wrong Answer!" I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Immediately alarm bells began filling the air and people came running from all directions.

"Where are you going?" One of them asked as a couple of them grabbed me.

"I'm going to the bathroom," I responded.

"No, you're not, you have to get back in bed." I was still resisting, completing forgetting I was attached to an IV as well. "You're going on the floor, you know?"

I glanced down and sure enough, I was. I got back in bed. My attempt to save people the trouble of waiting upon me had resulted in them having to scrub the floor AND change the bed. I was indeed imprisoned upon that bed.

There was nothing very dignified in having this disease. Not only is it annoying to have to ride the bedpan constantly, in these circumstances a parade of people filed through who got to see my normally hidden equipment and probably the most humiliating thing of all is to have some strange woman wiping your bottom.

Along with the seemingly never ending diarrhea (where is it all coming from) there were other tortures.  Every morning the Vampire would show up and collect her vials of blood. She was one of the few people there that didn't appear to have a sense of humor. Twice a day a nurse would appear and inject me in the stomach with a needle and four time a day a nurse would squirt a fowl-tasting elixir down my throat. I wasn't able to eat anything and no one had really told me anything either.

And no one in the outside world, other than my wife, even knew I was here. My wife didn't even know where they had taken me. I had no means of communicating to the world at large, no computer, no phone, nothing. I feared I would never get out of the place.