I’ve focused a lot on my bottom system here because that’s the baseline for the doctors knowing you’ve healed up. They make sure you’re walking and pooping and BOOM you’re out the door. My journey has been slow because of all the movement and trauma to my digestive system, and it’s taken a lot of time to get things back on track. Yesterday was a big milestone for me, because not only did they take me off IV fluids, but they let me move up from a Clear Liquid diet (basically your choice of three flavorless broths and/or Jell-O) to Full Liquid diet (several choices of soup, yogurt, pudding, ice cream and milk). I had beef broth for lunch and it was OK but pretty bland after the first two minutes. By dinnertime I almost cried when I had the Cream of Wheat and cream of potato soup, because the former was so shitty and the latter tasted so good. About an hour later, my intestines started ramping up and things got painful, so I ran to the bathroom and exploded. This happened several more times, and while it was unpleasant in the moment, it was a huge relief to know things are getting back up to speed.

The girls came to visit me at about 11 and sat with me through the day, which was lovely. I caught up with them while they busted out some crafts, ate my lunch and then promptly passed out on them for an hour and a half. Having them here was the best thing I could have asked for because I’d been back and forth with the nurses and doctors over the amount of progress I was making and had gotten really discouraged on Friday. We played some card games, talked and laughed, and capped things off with another chapter of Harry Potter while I ate my glorious dinner.

It was immediately quieter and lonely when they’d left, and I settled in for another difficult night of sleep. It’s hard to regulate temperature in these rooms, probably because the slow drip of pain meds I’m on comes out of me like a whisky drunk overnight: I sweat everything out from my back and freeze from my chest. No amount of AC manipulation, blanket arrangement or positioning will help, so I have to wait for exhaustion to take over after midnight and hope the 4-hour tech doesn’t flip ALL THE FUCKING LIGHTS ON when they come in to check my vitals. Hopefully the pills they put me on won’t have the same side effects.

Spending Christmas Eve in here is going to suck, no doubt. But hopefully I can get home sometime in the next two days. It can’t come soon enough.