Second Day In the Hospital

So, this is the second time in my life that I’ve been in a hospital. The first time was last year when they removed my hernias, but I only stayed for a day and two nights. Still, it was enough for me to discover gambling, damn it.

Yesterday morning, Serhiy brought me to this aging institute (gerontology—basically, the science of aging). They checked me in right away. The staff is friendly, and the room is decent—three older men and a toilet inside the room, but the shower is down the hall. On the bright side, there’s a wonderful view from the window. Too bad I don’t smoke, otherwise I’d be spending all my time out there.

They did an ECG, everyone sighed about how young I am to have this illness, and generally wondered where it even came from.

They were looking for a room to put me in—apparently, their inpatient list is complete until August, but they decided to admit me as an emergency. They said there were no spots in the male ward, and I joked that I could be placed in the female one. The doctor replied, “The ladies there are twice your age and five times your size.” 😂

I ended up in a room with 54-year-old Kostyantyn and 64-year-old Volodymyr. Kostyantyn has been ill for the past 5 years and has already encountered the same side effect—a craving for gambling. We shared our stories and laughed (though maybe we should have cried))).

He started promoting Joe Dispenza (I’ve written about his books before—a mix of various religious ideas, inappropriately sprinkled with scientific terms), talking about the quantum realm and how everything will be great once we access it. To put it mildly, I’m skeptical of this stuff, so I mostly stayed quiet and nodded along. Plus, I wasn’t sure whose side Volodymyr was on in that discussion.

But by lunch, Kostyantyn was discharged (which was a shame—he’s an open and cheerful guy), and it turned out that Volodymyr has the same attitude toward the “quantum realm” as I do. He’s also a psychology professor at the SBU Academy, so we talked the entire evening. His illness isn’t at an early stage, but he looks and carries himself very well.

Yesterday was my first day on a diet. It went great—I consumed only about 1500 kcal in total. I think the hospital food will help me lose weight, especially considering dinner was barley porridge cooked in water with a small piece of liver. So, it’ll be a healthy and low-calorie week.

In the morning, I installed an app to help me track calories—it’s faster than looking everything up manually and writing it down in a notebook. Plus, it has all those bells and whistles: stats, graphs, reminders. Now I’m waiting to get my blood drawn, so fasting is not easy right now.

During the day, I jogged lightly for 1 km to the sports area and did about 10 minutes of exercises. After that, I decided to replace the batteries in my watch. How much do you think such a service should cost? I expected about 200 UAH—that’s how much I took. And then: bam! The guy says it’s 700 UAH! Turned out there were two batteries, but still—350 UAH per battery? Long story short, I was shocked.

Now it’s almost 7 PM. Based on my parameters and lifestyle, the app calculated that I need 2200 kcal per day. So far, I’ve used 1600 of those—mainly because I’m eating hospital food: barley, wheat porridge, and more barley again))

To treat myself, I got some tomatoes, cucumbers, Insalata Como cheese, apples, and bananas—though I try not to overdo it with the fruit. Also, as I wrote earlier, I will try fasting based on a friend’s advice. And (miracle!) the app I installed also supports fasting. I chose the 14\10 method, which means I stop eating at 7 PM and can eat again at 9 AM. It’s not the easiest plan for beginners, but it’s still considered “light.”

So now I’ll have some final tomatoes for the day—and dream about barley until morning 😂

A few words about the treatment: four doctors gathered, called me in, asked the usual neurologist questions, and even called my mom to ask about the cephalhematoma I had at birth. They also wanted to know if I lied about not using psychotropic substances. But my mom and I had already entered into a criminal conspiracy and said “no,” even though I was actually under the influence of precursors during intake 😂

They still haven’t figured out what caused the illness (and here I thought they would…). They changed my medication plan, and now we’ll observe the effects for a few days.

Wishing you a pleasant evening—see you soon.