For the official record, I didn’t give up on my writing. I just took a much overdue vacation.

With that out of the way, I feel the need to update my appreciated readers on what I’ve been up to in the last several weeks since I last posted.

In early September, my parents had to call an ambulance on my behalf to take me to the hospital as I was having problems breathing. At first the doctors thought I had pneumonia, but even ten days of anti-biotics didn’t do anything other than screw up my stomach and bowel movements.

With the anti-biotics not working, one of the doctors had the gall to suggest that I might have early stages leukemia. This was in spite not having extremely elevated white blood cell counts or even so much as a fever.

In short, I spent ten days in the hospital on bedrest and the hospital didn’t even figure out what was wrong with me. I am now a believer in medical misdiagnoses being a very serious problem in modern medicine.

It turns out it was merely a virus infection in my lungs. I was also having problems with retaining water due to my congestive heart failure. My swelling took place mostly in my crotch and hips. The swelling was bad enough I couldn’t wear pants the whole time I was in the hospital.

I was put on diuretics, and I must have lost over one hundred pounds of fluids when I was in the hospital. Since I was on bedrest and having serious pain in my knees from my being forcefully taken off my three times a day Tylenol routine, I had to call a nurse every time I needed to urinate.

This annoyed some of the nurses. Sometimes they didn’t get to me in time, and I ended up peeing my hospital bed. Yeah, I’m a 44-year-old man talking about wetting the bed. Major blow to my pride and ego I tell you.

After my ten days in the hospital for my not pneumonia, I was sent to physical rehab for two weeks. My God in Heaven, that was an experience.

For starters, I wasn’t able to do much of rehab because my knees were hurting so bad I couldn’t even stand for more than ten seconds at a time. I was taken off my three times a day Tylenol regiment that had worked extremely well for almost two years while in the hospital.

Due to the forced bedrest, lack of a walker or a walking cane, I couldn’t walk the whole two weeks I was at physical rehab. After being back home for a couple of weeks, I can walk in my office with a walker. I still can’t walk well enough to get to the bathroom on my own. I feel so ashamed.

I feel like I spent three weeks in the hospital, most of it probably needlessly. I did get a new c-pap machine and got off a couple blood pressure meds.

I now take only two blood pressure meds and a couple meds for congestive heart failure. Half of the time my blood pressure is still too low, I’m talking like 110 over 55. But at least I’m not in the hospital anymore. September was a damn nightmare.