Sick in Paradise
I've been kind of silent on Facebook and Live Journal for a while. People have started asking what's going on, where have I been? So I will tell you.
I've decided I don't like making long winded posts to Facebook anymore. So I'm posting this entry on my Live Journal account, where I've felt at home for years. I will probably link to it on Facebook, so if there is anyone out there on Facebook who likes reading my long winded posts they can read it here using the link I will provide. I've decided I feel more comfortable making my longer posts here than on Facebook. Live Journal has been home to me for 12 years now. It precedes Facebook. It was even around before My Space. I'm glad that it has survived all of these years because on Live Journal people actually like to write more, to go into more detail about the things they're posting about, they put more heart into their posts than on Facebook, which really is more of a community bulletin board than a place to read and write. I also like the way LJ is organized better. All of my posts, as well as all of my friend's posts, appear in chronological order and it's very easy to go back and find something later, if you need to. Not so much on FB. I have been able to find most of the stuff I've written on FB at later times when I've needed to, but it's so much harder to find. I don't understand the way they archive my posts. I also like the way the filter system is set up on Live Journal much better than on Facebook. I can separate all of my friends into different sub groups and when I make posts that I'm okay with some of my friends seeing, but feel that others would be freaked out or offended by, it's very easy to create a special filter just for those I feel comfortable seeing certain content that might be a little too much for other people. I know you can do this on Facebook as well, but it's much more confusing for me and Facebook seems to change its privacy settings so often that when I make a post I don't know which friends can see it and which ones can't. So this post is going to be made to my Live Journal account. I'm okay with all of my Facebook friends seeing it, so I will use a public setting. That way my Facebook friends don't have to have a Live Journal account to see it. I think this is going to be the way I make longer posts from now on. If I have anything short and chatty to post, or a news article or video to link to, I'll still use Facebook. But when I make a lengthier post, it's going to be here, on LJ, where I've felt at home for more than 12 years.
So where have I been, you ask. Why the sudden silence?
Well, I was very sick for a while. Very sick. Sick enough to get me four days in the hospital. What happened was I caught a staph infection and had to have four abscesses operated on. One on my left hip, two under my left arm, and one on the top of my head. And in addition to that I had one in my nose that started off very small and swelled up to the size of a golf ball, or maybe even a plum. I had been to the Urgent care and they prescribed some antibiotics for me and I was taking them, but when my face started swelling up I said, "fuck it, that's it, I'm going to the emergency room!" They took me in and the doctor took one look at me and said, "that's it, we're going to operate and you're not going home for a few days, young man."
I was very lucky that the job I got here in July provides insurance. Yes, I do have VA insurance as well, because I am a veteran, but they don't have a VA facility here on Maui. If I had not had insurance from my job on Maui they would have had to fly me to Honolulu to the VA hospital there. I'm glad that didn't happen, because I think the care I got at a regular hospital on Maui is probably better than the care I would have gotten at a VA hospital.
When I came into the emergency room the doctor asked me if I was living on the beach or in an apartment. I told him I was living in a house.
"Are you sure you're not living on the beach," he asked again.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure I live in an apartment."
"Well, we rarely see staph infection this serious unless someone is living on the beach."
Apparently it's pretty common for homeless people to just camp out on the beach and staph is pretty rampant in Hawaii. I know, you get the impression that Hawaii is this pristine place, but it's a tropical climate and it's a petri dish for all kinds of bacteria. On top of that the place is pretty polluted. They dump a lot of raw sewage into the ocean here and lots and lots of people get infected with staph and a lot of other stuff. They even tell you if you have a cut or an open wound, don't go in the ocean! And you know how sometimes you might have a small cut and not even know it? I've had that happen plenty of times in my life. One day I might look down and see a small cut on my arm, or a leg, or another part of my body and wonder to myself how the hell I got that. So you've got to be pretty careful if you go in the ocean around here. And there are a million things that can give you small cuts that you don't even know you have. Walk across some lava rocks on your way to a beach and you might get a little cut on your foot, or even your hand if you scrape against them too hard, and chances are you might not even know that you have them. Then go into the water and the next day you wake up to a painful staph infection. Even when I was in the hospital, the nurses kept asking me if I got the infection by going into the ocean. "The ocean used to be a good place," they would tell me, "not so much anymore."
So anyway how, as the doctor asked, did I pick up such a severe case of staph? Well I think it all may have started two years ago in Cambodia.
When I came home from Cambodia in June of 2013 I noticed some red, unpleasant, painful bumps in my groin area. I was a little worried because before I came back to the states I did something I've only done twice in my life but didn't enjoy either time: I slept with a prostitute. But I wasn't stupid; I used a condom. But still I had these red bumps that looked to me like every description of syphilis I'd ever read. But how could this be? I used a condom, I should have been safe. So I got online and started researching syphilis, trying to find out if you could get it even if you used a condom. And I found out that yes, you can get the syph, even if you use a condom, but it's pretty rare.
I didn't think it could be anything else. I had slept with a whore three weeks prior and this was the exact amount of time they say that it takes for syphilis to start showing symptoms. So the next thing I did was to make myself an appointment at a clinic in Metairie to have myself tested for STDs. When the test results came back I showed NEGATIVE for all STDs, including HIV and AIDS.
"Okay," I said to myself, "I don't have any sexually transmitted diseases, so what the hell are these bumps on my groin area?"
Then one appeared on my forehead, right around my hairline, and then one popped up on my chest and became abscessed. So I went to another clinic in Metairie. I still had my overseas health insurance and it was still good for 30 days after returning to the states. So I went in and showed the lady doctor from India what was going on and she said, "That is a staph infection. I've seen this many times before." So she gave me a script for some antibiotics and even made an appointment to have the abscess lanced, but the pills worked so well that the abscess started to drain right away, so I was able to cancel the appointment to have it lanced. In a few days I was as good as new. But that's where the real trouble began.
Back then I was ignorant of how antibiotics work. I did not know that you're supposed to take ALL of them, even if the symptoms go away. So as soon as the abscess was gone I stopped taking the drugs, thinking that I could save them in case something else comes up, or if the staph came back. I blame some of this on the shitty health care system in this country. You see, for so long I had gone without insurance, I didn't even know that I was eligible for VA heath care because of my service in the army. Yeah, I was pretty stupid. But I've always been healthy and rarely ever got sick. But on the few occasions when I did, if I was given a script and the symptoms went away before I had taken all the drugs, I would save the rest of my pills, just in case I might need them for something else down the road. Usually this would be for pain medication. When I had those two herniated discs in my back they gave me a script for Vicodin. They wanted me to take four vics a day! No fucking way, Jose! I know that Vicodin is very addictive, if I were to take that many Vicodin a day I would become a Vicodin addict, and I sure as hell didn't want that. So I saved the extra pills for rainy days when I have back pain and really really need to nuke the pain. They gave me so many Vicodin that I still have some left to this day, and that was over three years ago. I do have bad back days, about two or three a year, and I have saved the leftover Vicodin for those few days a year when I'm in so much pain that I need relief RIGHT NOW! So this is how I developed this mindset of saving any medications that I didn't feel I needed. I could save them for later. If I would have been one of the lucky people in this country who have never had to worry about having health insurance I don't think I would have developed this mindset.
So, like I said, I stopped taking the antibiotics as soon as the staph was gone. And no one told me I was supposed to take them all. It didn't even say that on the prescription bottle.
Well, everything was fine...for a year or so. But suddenly one day I started seeing the same kind of bumps on my body again and so, don't you know, I still had some of those antibiotics left over from the last time. So I took the rest of the pills, still not knowing that I was only taking about half a dose. So the problem went away again. Until I got out here to Maui.
So in June I had an outbreak of staph again, with a huge abscess on my back. But by this time I had found out that staph can become resistant to antibiotics. So I went to the urgent care and the doc gave me another script for antibiotics. He gave me so many that they lasted me over a month! But by this time I knew you're supposed to take them all and I did. Well, the staph went right away and the abscess on my back healed well. But about two weeks after the antibiotics ran out it came roaring back again and that was the time that landed me in the hospital.
I was up there for four days. When I came in they thought I had MRSA, which is about the worst kind of antibiotic resistant staph you can get. They tested me for it and it took three days for the tests to come back. But the whole time they were waiting for the test results they were using an IV to pump me full of what they said were "the strongest antibiotics known to man." Well, the tests came back and they showed that it wasn't MRSA, thank the God that I don't believe in, it was something they call Cellulitus.
So that's where I've been and that's why I've been kind of quiet on Facebook and elsewhere. I've been slowly recovering and am just now starting to feel better. In between the two outbreaks of staph I had a terrible stomach flue. For two weeks I had the runs and the doctors told me that was probably because when I was taking the antibiotics for the first staph infection I caught here it killed all the good bugs in my stomach as well as killing all the bad bugs. Antibiotics can't tell the difference between good bacteria and bad bacteria, they just kill them all good as well as bad. And when I stopped taking the antibiotics a lot of bad bugs probably rushed into my nice clean tummy and found themselves a new home. Now that the last of the antibiotics that the hospital sent me home with have run out, I'm taking some pro-biotic drinks that you can buy at the grocery store in order to get as many good bacteria into my system as I can and not give the bad bacteria a chance to establish a colony in my gut. So far so good, my poop has been firm. I know, euuwww TMI!
So I guess you could say that the whole time I've been on the island I've either been sick or recovering from being sick. And that's probably why, along with the erratic hours I work at my job, which is something I'll go into more detail about in another post, I haven't been getting much writing done.
My whole purpose for coming out here was to be able to have time to write. Well, as it turns out I think I was doing better with that when I was in New Orleans. I'll be out here for a little while longer, but I am planning on going back home soon. I already have a very nice apartment lined up in the Marigny and I'm really looking forward to living by myself again. I have two room mates here on the island, and although they're about as good of room mates as one can get I would much rather live by myself.
So that's the long story of what I've been doing and why I haven't been posting very much on social media. I wish I could tell you I was out exploring the island, doing all kind of neat things in paradise, but that hasn't been the case. Now that I'm getting healthy again I hope that I can do a few more cool things with the time I have left here and if I do I will try to share them with my friends on Live Journal as well as my friends on Facebook.
That's all for now. I will try to write more later.
I've decided I don't like making long winded posts to Facebook anymore. So I'm posting this entry on my Live Journal account, where I've felt at home for years. I will probably link to it on Facebook, so if there is anyone out there on Facebook who likes reading my long winded posts they can read it here using the link I will provide. I've decided I feel more comfortable making my longer posts here than on Facebook. Live Journal has been home to me for 12 years now. It precedes Facebook. It was even around before My Space. I'm glad that it has survived all of these years because on Live Journal people actually like to write more, to go into more detail about the things they're posting about, they put more heart into their posts than on Facebook, which really is more of a community bulletin board than a place to read and write. I also like the way LJ is organized better. All of my posts, as well as all of my friend's posts, appear in chronological order and it's very easy to go back and find something later, if you need to. Not so much on FB. I have been able to find most of the stuff I've written on FB at later times when I've needed to, but it's so much harder to find. I don't understand the way they archive my posts. I also like the way the filter system is set up on Live Journal much better than on Facebook. I can separate all of my friends into different sub groups and when I make posts that I'm okay with some of my friends seeing, but feel that others would be freaked out or offended by, it's very easy to create a special filter just for those I feel comfortable seeing certain content that might be a little too much for other people. I know you can do this on Facebook as well, but it's much more confusing for me and Facebook seems to change its privacy settings so often that when I make a post I don't know which friends can see it and which ones can't. So this post is going to be made to my Live Journal account. I'm okay with all of my Facebook friends seeing it, so I will use a public setting. That way my Facebook friends don't have to have a Live Journal account to see it. I think this is going to be the way I make longer posts from now on. If I have anything short and chatty to post, or a news article or video to link to, I'll still use Facebook. But when I make a lengthier post, it's going to be here, on LJ, where I've felt at home for more than 12 years.
So where have I been, you ask. Why the sudden silence?
Well, I was very sick for a while. Very sick. Sick enough to get me four days in the hospital. What happened was I caught a staph infection and had to have four abscesses operated on. One on my left hip, two under my left arm, and one on the top of my head. And in addition to that I had one in my nose that started off very small and swelled up to the size of a golf ball, or maybe even a plum. I had been to the Urgent care and they prescribed some antibiotics for me and I was taking them, but when my face started swelling up I said, "fuck it, that's it, I'm going to the emergency room!" They took me in and the doctor took one look at me and said, "that's it, we're going to operate and you're not going home for a few days, young man."
I was very lucky that the job I got here in July provides insurance. Yes, I do have VA insurance as well, because I am a veteran, but they don't have a VA facility here on Maui. If I had not had insurance from my job on Maui they would have had to fly me to Honolulu to the VA hospital there. I'm glad that didn't happen, because I think the care I got at a regular hospital on Maui is probably better than the care I would have gotten at a VA hospital.
When I came into the emergency room the doctor asked me if I was living on the beach or in an apartment. I told him I was living in a house.
"Are you sure you're not living on the beach," he asked again.
"Yes, yes, I'm sure I live in an apartment."
"Well, we rarely see staph infection this serious unless someone is living on the beach."
Apparently it's pretty common for homeless people to just camp out on the beach and staph is pretty rampant in Hawaii. I know, you get the impression that Hawaii is this pristine place, but it's a tropical climate and it's a petri dish for all kinds of bacteria. On top of that the place is pretty polluted. They dump a lot of raw sewage into the ocean here and lots and lots of people get infected with staph and a lot of other stuff. They even tell you if you have a cut or an open wound, don't go in the ocean! And you know how sometimes you might have a small cut and not even know it? I've had that happen plenty of times in my life. One day I might look down and see a small cut on my arm, or a leg, or another part of my body and wonder to myself how the hell I got that. So you've got to be pretty careful if you go in the ocean around here. And there are a million things that can give you small cuts that you don't even know you have. Walk across some lava rocks on your way to a beach and you might get a little cut on your foot, or even your hand if you scrape against them too hard, and chances are you might not even know that you have them. Then go into the water and the next day you wake up to a painful staph infection. Even when I was in the hospital, the nurses kept asking me if I got the infection by going into the ocean. "The ocean used to be a good place," they would tell me, "not so much anymore."
So anyway how, as the doctor asked, did I pick up such a severe case of staph? Well I think it all may have started two years ago in Cambodia.
When I came home from Cambodia in June of 2013 I noticed some red, unpleasant, painful bumps in my groin area. I was a little worried because before I came back to the states I did something I've only done twice in my life but didn't enjoy either time: I slept with a prostitute. But I wasn't stupid; I used a condom. But still I had these red bumps that looked to me like every description of syphilis I'd ever read. But how could this be? I used a condom, I should have been safe. So I got online and started researching syphilis, trying to find out if you could get it even if you used a condom. And I found out that yes, you can get the syph, even if you use a condom, but it's pretty rare.
I didn't think it could be anything else. I had slept with a whore three weeks prior and this was the exact amount of time they say that it takes for syphilis to start showing symptoms. So the next thing I did was to make myself an appointment at a clinic in Metairie to have myself tested for STDs. When the test results came back I showed NEGATIVE for all STDs, including HIV and AIDS.
"Okay," I said to myself, "I don't have any sexually transmitted diseases, so what the hell are these bumps on my groin area?"
Then one appeared on my forehead, right around my hairline, and then one popped up on my chest and became abscessed. So I went to another clinic in Metairie. I still had my overseas health insurance and it was still good for 30 days after returning to the states. So I went in and showed the lady doctor from India what was going on and she said, "That is a staph infection. I've seen this many times before." So she gave me a script for some antibiotics and even made an appointment to have the abscess lanced, but the pills worked so well that the abscess started to drain right away, so I was able to cancel the appointment to have it lanced. In a few days I was as good as new. But that's where the real trouble began.
Back then I was ignorant of how antibiotics work. I did not know that you're supposed to take ALL of them, even if the symptoms go away. So as soon as the abscess was gone I stopped taking the drugs, thinking that I could save them in case something else comes up, or if the staph came back. I blame some of this on the shitty health care system in this country. You see, for so long I had gone without insurance, I didn't even know that I was eligible for VA heath care because of my service in the army. Yeah, I was pretty stupid. But I've always been healthy and rarely ever got sick. But on the few occasions when I did, if I was given a script and the symptoms went away before I had taken all the drugs, I would save the rest of my pills, just in case I might need them for something else down the road. Usually this would be for pain medication. When I had those two herniated discs in my back they gave me a script for Vicodin. They wanted me to take four vics a day! No fucking way, Jose! I know that Vicodin is very addictive, if I were to take that many Vicodin a day I would become a Vicodin addict, and I sure as hell didn't want that. So I saved the extra pills for rainy days when I have back pain and really really need to nuke the pain. They gave me so many Vicodin that I still have some left to this day, and that was over three years ago. I do have bad back days, about two or three a year, and I have saved the leftover Vicodin for those few days a year when I'm in so much pain that I need relief RIGHT NOW! So this is how I developed this mindset of saving any medications that I didn't feel I needed. I could save them for later. If I would have been one of the lucky people in this country who have never had to worry about having health insurance I don't think I would have developed this mindset.
So, like I said, I stopped taking the antibiotics as soon as the staph was gone. And no one told me I was supposed to take them all. It didn't even say that on the prescription bottle.
Well, everything was fine...for a year or so. But suddenly one day I started seeing the same kind of bumps on my body again and so, don't you know, I still had some of those antibiotics left over from the last time. So I took the rest of the pills, still not knowing that I was only taking about half a dose. So the problem went away again. Until I got out here to Maui.
So in June I had an outbreak of staph again, with a huge abscess on my back. But by this time I had found out that staph can become resistant to antibiotics. So I went to the urgent care and the doc gave me another script for antibiotics. He gave me so many that they lasted me over a month! But by this time I knew you're supposed to take them all and I did. Well, the staph went right away and the abscess on my back healed well. But about two weeks after the antibiotics ran out it came roaring back again and that was the time that landed me in the hospital.
I was up there for four days. When I came in they thought I had MRSA, which is about the worst kind of antibiotic resistant staph you can get. They tested me for it and it took three days for the tests to come back. But the whole time they were waiting for the test results they were using an IV to pump me full of what they said were "the strongest antibiotics known to man." Well, the tests came back and they showed that it wasn't MRSA, thank the God that I don't believe in, it was something they call Cellulitus.
So that's where I've been and that's why I've been kind of quiet on Facebook and elsewhere. I've been slowly recovering and am just now starting to feel better. In between the two outbreaks of staph I had a terrible stomach flue. For two weeks I had the runs and the doctors told me that was probably because when I was taking the antibiotics for the first staph infection I caught here it killed all the good bugs in my stomach as well as killing all the bad bugs. Antibiotics can't tell the difference between good bacteria and bad bacteria, they just kill them all good as well as bad. And when I stopped taking the antibiotics a lot of bad bugs probably rushed into my nice clean tummy and found themselves a new home. Now that the last of the antibiotics that the hospital sent me home with have run out, I'm taking some pro-biotic drinks that you can buy at the grocery store in order to get as many good bacteria into my system as I can and not give the bad bacteria a chance to establish a colony in my gut. So far so good, my poop has been firm. I know, euuwww TMI!
So I guess you could say that the whole time I've been on the island I've either been sick or recovering from being sick. And that's probably why, along with the erratic hours I work at my job, which is something I'll go into more detail about in another post, I haven't been getting much writing done.
My whole purpose for coming out here was to be able to have time to write. Well, as it turns out I think I was doing better with that when I was in New Orleans. I'll be out here for a little while longer, but I am planning on going back home soon. I already have a very nice apartment lined up in the Marigny and I'm really looking forward to living by myself again. I have two room mates here on the island, and although they're about as good of room mates as one can get I would much rather live by myself.
So that's the long story of what I've been doing and why I haven't been posting very much on social media. I wish I could tell you I was out exploring the island, doing all kind of neat things in paradise, but that hasn't been the case. Now that I'm getting healthy again I hope that I can do a few more cool things with the time I have left here and if I do I will try to share them with my friends on Live Journal as well as my friends on Facebook.
That's all for now. I will try to write more later.