happy to be home
After much waiting around, begging, and bargaining with doctors, I am now home from Mount Sinai Hospital. Thanks to all who sent well wishes via my wife while I was MIA. I'm still pretty drained and a bit depressed from the experience, but obviously happy that my ailments weren't life threatening. It will take a few days of heavy antibiotics and rest before I'm acclimated and ready to schedule my follow-up exams and treatments!



If you are interested in my personal business…




I checked myself into the emergency room Friday night after suffering through stomach cramps, countless trips to the bathroom and mild dizziness all day. I assumed it was just payback for eating too much pizza at my friend's Lost-viewing party the night before. I tried to work through it, hoping to finish putting together the Nick Mag presentation for the SPLAT graphic novel conference. I had offered to help organize and stuff the goodie bags for the event and wanted to make sure the Nick Mag table was set up and ready for the next day. I figured since I was aiming to be there around 8:30 in the morning, I'd sleep better if all this stuff was taken care of. Except by the time I got home I realized things weren't getting better and blood in the toilet is never a good sign.

Realizing we had no idea where the nearest hospitals were, Raina and I started calling our insurance company and ended up at Mount Sinai Hospital which is a 5-minute cab ride away. After a ton of blood tests that almost caused me to pass out, I realized I wasn't going anywhere soon. They took some X-rays and started prepping me for a CAT scan. This basically involved drinking an entire liter of sterilized water that tasted horrible. It was reminiscent of the cave sequence from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince with me as Dumbledore, insisting that Raina force me to drink the entire contents of the bottle no matter how much I protested. By 3:30AM, the ER was crazy crowded and there was a long wait for CAT scans and bedrooms. I convinced Raina to take a cab home rather than wait for me, which was good since I didn't end up taking the scan until 6AM and didn't get a bed until around 7:30AM. The whole night feels very surreal in retrospect…especially since all I could think about was how I still wanted to get home with enough time to take a shower and get to SPLAT for my panel at 2:15PM. Adding to my disbelief was the fact that I had just been to see a neurologist and had a shaky MRI scan for my wrist the week before (and still haven't gotten the test results back for that). And of course, I couldn't help but compare these large machines to something out of the X-Men films, which are fresh in mind because of the Manga X-Men Raina and I have been working on.

I’m sure people make this observation all the time, but being in the hospital can really make you feel even sicker. Especially since I was in a room with:

1. An old man, who kept needing his diaper changed, and cried all night begging the nurses to "pull the plug" because "this is no way to live!" and repeating the following phrases over and over: "I'm trapped!" "I don't know if I'm coming or going!" "This is the worst part!" "They got me in a corner!"

2. An even older man who didn't talk at all, but just laid in his bed with a blank stare.

3. A man behind a curtain who never stopped coughing for more than 5 minutes except when answering his cell phone to speak in another language.

4. Machines that would constantly beep or give off alert noises if the people attached to them made a wrong move. To get any sleep I had to wear headphones and listen to music.

Someone kept coming by to collect blood from me every few hours. For all of Saturday I was hooked up to an IV drip and fed intravenously and pumped with antibiotics. Any time I needed to use the bathroom (which was all the time) I had to have a nurse temporarily unhook me, or drag the IV unit down the crowded hallway into a tight men's room. But it was hard to complain about that because at least I could get up, which didn't seem to be the case for any of the other patients in my wing of the hospital. Saturday night, the hospital was so crowded, the hallways were filled with beds for people who couldn't get a room.

Sunday morning I transferred onto an all-liquid diet of that carried over till Monday. It's amazing how when you don't eat anything for long enough, the prospect of powdered broth can seem so exciting. But it's hard to tell if your stomach is feeling better when you have nothing inside you but liquids and antibiotics pumped into your arm. Even just having to keep the valve in my arm when disconnected from the IV would make me sick if I thought about it too much.

The biggest problem for me was the lack of communication. No one would give me a straight answer about what exactly was wrong or how long I would need to stay in the hospital. A nurse claimed she read somewhere that the CAT scan showed no sign of a major rupture or physical damage, but didn't want me to quote her on that. The general doctor who was treating me only made rounds once day, which was my only chance to get concrete information. But even he wouldn't commit to any diagnosis or say how long I would need to be hospitalized. It was all up to the stomach doctor…but no one knew when he'd ever show up. They said 'usually 24 hours after they make the call.' But when did they make this call? Friday or Saturday? The nurses were super-nice but kept pointing out that it was a weekend and they didn't know ANY of the doctors' schedules.

When the stomach doctor eventually showed up on Sunday, he finally confirmed that I didn't have cancer but a form of bacterial colitis. As long as I promised to follow up with a colonoscopy, I should be able to switch to oral antibiotics and eventually take the steps to eating solid foods and go home. But he still wouldn't commit to how long that would take and said it would be up to the general doctor who was already gone for the night. So I woke up on Monday hoping I would get to go home but seemingly nothing had changed including the liquid diet. I kept saying, "I can leave before tonight. I don't need to sleep here again," but the nurses just smiled knowingly. When my dad came to visit he had this attitude like, "I'm signing you out right now!" but by that point I had already given up hope and accepted my fate. On the bright side they did finally unhook my arm valve and by 9PM they finally said I could eat "soft foods"…except the kitchen had already closed! So Raina and my dad sprinted across the street to buy me some whole wheat pita bread before getting kicked out for the night.

I didn't get discharged until Tuesday afternoon. And if I hadn't been such a pest about it I would probably still be there now. The strangest part was all of a sudden, attendants and nurses who barely made eye contact with me all weekend were suddenly asking me to put in a good word for them if I was ever called for a survey. "Don't say service was 'good.' 'Excellent' is the word that will register with them," I was told.

As I was leaving the hospital I was overcome with the sense that I needed to make a break for it! What if someone didn't get the memo? I wanted to sprint to the elevator before someone realized I wasn't allowed to leave. And rather unbelievably, there was a 2-car collision right in front of us during the cab ride home! Thanks to airbags, both drivers managed to walk away from the wreckage, but it was a heart thumping endnote on the whole traumatic experience.

Returning home was a magical experience to say the least. Nothing better than sleeping in your own bed! (OTP!)

Fingers crossed that the various antibiotics (and additional medicine) and follow up tests will keep things in check and I can go back to loving life.

Positive side notes:

-Going through this further confirmed that my wife is a supportive and amazing person, and I am insanely lucky to have the friends and family that I do.

-I was really sad to miss out on SPLAT, but Raina brought me a poster signed and doodled on my many of the attendees with "get well" messages.

-Being stuck in bed allowed me think about some story ideas and world-building for far-off writing projects.

-I got to play Nintendo DS for the first time in months. Even though I love the concept and art direction, I realized I'm not smart enough to play Professor Layton and the Curious Village (I got stuck on Puzzles 3 and 4). Mega Man: Advent ZX is more my speed. Also the tactical battles of Shining Force are ideal gameplay for the sick and semi-conscious.

-Since I didn't watch any TV or have any internet connection, preloaded comics podcasts on my iPod helped keep my spirits up. I listened to quite a few interviews with Jeff Smith, but of special highlight was his 2-part interview on Indie Spinner Rack. I was practically in stitches during the Grandma Ben song from the "Bone: The Musical" segments, which led to strange looks from the visitors in the room. Laughter IS the best medicine…especially for keeping my sanity. Thanks guys!