Today I was checked out of the hospital. Although the care was superb, the prognosis is grim.

The sepsis raged for four days and the hospital staff, trying to fight the nasty infections from my dysfunctional intestine, fed me massive amounts of antibiotics which sent my heart into atrial fibrillation and wild pulse swings from about 68 to 135. Staff fought around the clock trying to keep the fibrillation from giving me a stroke and to keep the infection in line and they eventually won the day. I gave up blood samples seemingly every couple hours. Kaiser should have enough of my blood to paint an Amish barn. It was miserable.

The really nasty part was getting the other info the staff had gleaned from the CAT scans I had on December 28 and 29. There is a solid mass on my right kidney that is actually bigger than the kidney. It has metastasized into my lungs. A biopsy confirmed the diagnosis. Their name for it is Renal Cell Carcinoma. My name for it is frightening sumbitch. It cannot be excised by surgery.

I am glad to be out of the hospital but I feel like I have been beat up by thugs. Thank God for Kaiser’s Part C Medigap coverage and my family who stayed with me all the way through my time in Wing 4 South.