Though it’s good that I’m out of the hospital, the bad news is that I don’t feel well. During the hospitalization, I suffered from chills, low-grade fevers and sweats that would leave me soaked like I’d stood in a downpour for 20 minutes. In the afternoons, early evenings I would crash hard, which explains the lack of blog posts during the stay as it’s hard to write when you’re curled up in a ball hoping a bolt of lightning will strike you and end your misery. No such luck.

All of this mystified the doctors and they never really came up with an explanation. When I went off the Tylenol a few days before they kicked me loose, they looked at that as a positive sign. So did I. But they never really asked me how I was feeling when they surprised me Friday and sent me home. They made an executive decision that 20 days of IVs was enough. They must have entered it into their mental program and processed it – Send him home, he should feel better by now. I guess I should, but I don’t.

I brought the low-grade fevers, chills and body temperature swings home with me. What a bonus. Now the question is whether I have to go back to the hospital or not. I lived with them over the weekend hoping they would magically go away. Finally, I emailed my doctor this morning and he replied with a few questions about my stomach, which is fine. Then I didn’t hear back. He must be hoping this will pass, go away without explanation, which is what they all must have been thinking while I was in the hospital. Well, it didn’t go away tonight. And tomorrow I go back to work and I feel tired and 50 percent. It’s going to take everything I can muster to get through the day.

This is the first hospitalization where I feel the decision-making system during my stay failed me. It took them six days to embolize me. I wish I had had the courage to force the decision sooner. I didn’t. But I knew I needed to be embolized from day one. They kept throwing the possible dangers of the procedure at me. Yet, my lungs decayed by not doing treatments. I may never get that lung function back. It’s one thing to be hosed by cystic fibrosis; it’s another to be hosed by the medical process. The latter makes me angrier.

I’ll be tortured about this visit for the rest of my life.