# I almost died (major surgery)



## José Herring (Dec 2, 2009)

Sorry to hear that. I hope you get better very quickly. 

Maybe its time to put on some weight! (jk)

Get better fast.

--José


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## Hannes_F (Dec 2, 2009)

Hi kid-surf, glad you are halfway OK again.

BTW did you have an antibiotic treatment some time before? Anyways it would be good to check out Perenterol (that is what it is called here) or any other product that contains this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharomyces_boulardii

What also seems to help intestine patients is natural yoghourt with all the germs in it.

Hope you are better soon, inflammatory bowel deseases (if it is that) are a plague.


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## artsoundz (Dec 2, 2009)

kid-surf @ Wed Dec 02 said:


> Spent 15 days in the hospital. Felt great one day, the next day I'm in for emergency surgery. They removed 8 inches of my intestine. Another surgery in 3 months. Doctors were stumped at first claiming I'm otherwise in excellent shape. Crazy thing is, if I had been a 'fat guy' I may have avoided surgery.
> 
> I'm thankful to be alive. It's going to be a while till I surf again. I'm hobbling around.
> 
> ...but my attitude is good. It could be way worse.



for a guy that writes as well as you do, that's not nearly enough info. what happened? hope you're feeling better.


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## choc0thrax (Dec 2, 2009)

I noticed a distinct lack of screenwriting talk on the forum, now I know why.

To quote a Seinfeld song:

Get well, get well soon, we want you to get well. Get well, get well soon, we want you to get well... and so forth.


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## John DeBorde (Dec 2, 2009)

yikes! hope you feel better soon dude.  

john


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## JohnG (Dec 2, 2009)

Kid I'm sorry you went through such an ordeal. I hope you are better now.


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## synthetic (Dec 2, 2009)

Wow, scary. Take care of yourself man.


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## Frederick Russ (Dec 2, 2009)

Scary stuff. Get well!


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## Lex (Dec 2, 2009)

Get well soon 

aLex


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 2, 2009)

Glad you're okay.

Care to post some pictures?


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## midphase (Dec 2, 2009)

Holy crap....that's nuts! Glad you're pulling through...it'll take a whole lot more than 8" of intestine to stop your energy!

Keep us posted, especially on the details of what happened since it might help someone to see the signs early on.

I hope you have a good laptop with you and that you're at least taking your forced bed-time as an opportunity to write your next script!

Best of luck...we miss you!


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## Ed (Dec 2, 2009)

God damn I hate this "i felt fine one minute" stories, they remind me I could die any minute. 

ARGH

Glad you're okay though!


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## tobyond (Dec 2, 2009)

Wishing you all the best.

Hope we can catch up soon.


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## schatzus (Dec 2, 2009)

Jeez...
Every day is a gift...
Hope your 100% soon.


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## madbulk (Dec 2, 2009)

Sorry, Man. That's awful. Best wishes.


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## nikolas (Dec 2, 2009)

Yikes!

But you're ok now, with a follow up surgery, which shouldn't be too serious I hope! All the best from over here as well! And a speedy recovery!


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## Garlu (Dec 2, 2009)

I am sorry to read that. 

Take care man! Get better!

All the best,

Garlu.


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## Dave Connor (Dec 2, 2009)

Jeez, okay now that that's over stay a half century plus or so. Speedy recovery for you!


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## Brian Ralston (Dec 3, 2009)

Get well Jayson. I'm sending good vibes and thoughts. 

Many years ago, my mom had about 8 feet of intestine removed due to a 30+ year struggle with Diverticulitis. She made if through that fairly well though. It is amazing how the body can adapt and heal after various levels of trauma done to it.


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## Andreas Moisa (Dec 3, 2009)

Hey Kid,

I think it's really sort of scary, to be healthy until you're not.
Can happen to everybody any time.
I wish you recover well and keep the postings here up!
Andreas


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## hbuus (Dec 3, 2009)

Hey man,

We all probably more or less run around taking life for granted, but to be in ok health is actually something one ought to be thankful for. It's not a given. Sometimes stuff happens that reminds you though. I'm glad to hear you're ok and in a good spirit. Hope you will be out surfing again!

Best regards,
Henrik


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## Waywyn (Dec 3, 2009)

Speedy recovery .. life can be a bitch sometimes!


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Dec 3, 2009)

What doesn't kill you will make you kick ass even more!!!

I had my large intestine removed in 2005, after losing a battle to Colitis. Life has been sweet since. Please contact me via PM or Facebook if you want to share war stories...  

PS: It's good to have a little extra fat, just in case you get sick. Seriously.


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## Dan Selby (Dec 3, 2009)

Must have rocked you, coming out of the blue. Hope you recover quickly and fully!


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## rJames (Dec 3, 2009)

Get well soon. Best wishes. Could happen any day to any person. Makes ya think.


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## Guy Bacos (Dec 3, 2009)

kid-surf @ Wed Dec 02 said:


> Crazy thing is, if I had been a 'fat guy' I may have avoided surgery.



How is that?

Get well man!


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## Craig Sharmat (Dec 4, 2009)

Scary stuff

For those who have not see Kid he certainly looks to be in good shape.

Best wishes for a quick recovery!

Craig


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## The_Dark_Knight (Dec 4, 2009)

Sorry to hear about this, get well soon.

best,
-cd


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## dogforester (Dec 4, 2009)

Get well soon Kid.


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## George Caplan (Dec 6, 2009)

Why does everyone think just because it's surgery it must be serious?

It's not.

Recover soon and get back in the water Kid.


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## choc0thrax (Dec 6, 2009)

Could be because of the "almost died" in the thread title.


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## kid-surf (Dec 6, 2009)

Thanks dudes, one and all, means a lot!

But were the hell are my flowers? Sheesh... (hint, pink is my favorite color)

Nick -- did you want a picture of the piece of my intestine? 

Kays -- yep have my laptop and am able to write, so that's cool.

Ned and Brian -- Thanks for those stories! Right about now they are very uplifting. Brian, I'm curious how long it took your Mom to find mobility again, I mean where she felt like herself. I can hobble around but I could never do a jumping jack in this state. Ned, I'll PM you with some questions. Thanks!

Guy -- The surgeons explained to me that, had there been more fat around my organs that they wouldn't have been touching each other. The close proximity is what ultimately caused the infection to become severe.

Hannes -- Yes, they tried to attack it with antibiotics for 5 days before the surgery...well here's what happened [below]...George Caplan has inspired me to try and document the experience.


Stop reading anytime, I go long:

I was feeling fine, doing yard work, your ordinary weekend. I think I may have washed my car, whatever else. Felt 100%. That night I had some abdominal pain, I thought nothing of it. Following day I came down with a fever which climbed to 103 by the evening. I'm thinking I may have H1N1 at this time. To my surprise the fever is gone i the am, only the abdomen pain is still there. The type of very dull pain with doesn't seem like an emergency but I had never felt anything quite like this. I decided to go to the ER just in case.

In the ER the run my vitals they think I look great, but are a little confused by the pain. They suggest I go home, but stay i touch if anything changes that they don't believe it's anything major. Telling me that they don't want to do a CT, that I'm relatively young and in good shape, that they don't want to expose me to radiation. But before I leave they decide to take a urine sample anyway. BLOOD in my urine. My heart drops. That can't be good. There was no blood in my urine just minutes earlier. Suddenly I'm uneasy. BANG! They don't even test the urine, immediately they do CT.

Later... 

In walks a surgeon. Explains that they need to admit me. That they want to try and avoid surgery. That they will aggressively attack it with antibiotics. That "usually" this works and that surgery is not needed in those cases. But that there was no guarantee. Fuck...

Almost immediately I go down hill fast. Excruciating pain. I'm the type who avoids aspirin. But I give in, the pain is to bad, I take the morphine. Soon I'm living on the shit, shot after shot into my IV. Suddenly my world is becoming dark at this point, I'm trying to stay positive but the pain is excruciating hour after hour 10, 20 hours of excruciating pain...I begin to lose sense of time, as my room is claustrophobic and dark, all day, all night. Finally I fall asleep. I wake up drugged. I look at the clock on the wall 3:00. I ask 3:00 am? My wife tells me it's 3:00pm. My wife is by my side in this little shit-hole of a room. She's making calls I don't know what's going on I'm out of it. She leave the room to finish calls.

An older man walk into the room. Asks me how I am. He's got an air about him, even in my state I recognize it. He asks me if I know ______ a big man at the agency. I tell the man that my wife does. The man explains that he is friends with this man and that the man wanted him to stop by. The man in my room explains that he is the head of the hospital. Suddenly I feel a bit more comforted. Suddenly I'm extremely grateful for people going out of their way for me.

More hell and pain and drugs and my wife just watching me be in excruciating pain and then sleeping and more drugs, round the clock nurses poking and prodding me every 3 hours on the hour, vitals, etc. constantly drawing blood. I've got two IVs. you get the picture.

5 days later I'm starting to feel better. I haven't eaten real food for a week, only IV. I go on a liquid diet. Soon I'm eating real food. They tell me I'm out of the woods. That it's time to discharge me. Good, I'm ready to go home. I go to uses the restroom before I leave. BANG! The most excruciating pain I've ever felt in my life. I can't stand up. I essentially beg them for morphine, MORE MORE MORE! It feels as though someone is repeatedly stabbing me. They want to take me for another CT. This pain is morbid (unbeknownst to me my intestine had just burst - feces filling my body) I am demanding more morphine it's not working fast enough. They are a bit startled my wife is panicked. Chaos. It is at this moment that I say "Call the surgeon...I give up"

Moments later I'm being wheeled down a hall. I am in the type of pain where you cannot see, you cannot think of anything other than being free of the type of pain that feels like death. At this point my only escape from this excruciating pain is the gas mask to put me under. I was in so much pain that I had no fear of the surgery. I say my goodbyes to my wife who is crying. "Hopefully I'll live through this" I think to myself, I face my mortality on the spot and apologize for any shitty thing I've done to my wife and tell her that I do not regret a moment of our lives together. I'm not ready to leave this world, but I make peace with the idea. I look at the fear in my wife's eyes and hope I can be there to comfort at the end of this. They wheel me through the double white doors.

GEAR - the pain is overwhelming. But I can't help but to notice the surreal surroundings. Here I am in an operating room. Like on TV, this looks like a film or TV set, but no, this is really happening, these people are going to either save me or kill me. Let's go...this pain is fucking killing me, literally.

They move me onto the operating table. Mask immediately over my nose and mouth. "Breathe", 10, 9, 8, 7 (is this shit going to knock me out or what!? This fucking pain!) 6....

I wake up after a 5 hour surgery. I am fairly conscious considering. There is my wife and my sisters. Thank god I'm alive, and I'm not even religions. There is a think tube down my throat and another jammed up my penis - and - I've got a colostomy bag. And I'm told that I'll need another surgery in 3 months to reattach my intestine. I'm told that my intestine had burst and that feces was spilling into my body. I have a brand new an 8" scar on my stomach and 26 staples holding that together. But I'm alive...And thankful. It could be far worse, I could be 6 feet under.

And suddenly I have a profound respect for surgeons.

That night I come to a little more. I see an ad for the Mattel children's hospital which happens to be right down the hall from me. Kids with cancer, all sorts of "permanent" afflictions. I started crying like a baby (I don't remember the last time that's happened, 14 years old when my dad died?). Here those kids live inside this hospital month after month, many of them never having known what the word "carefree" means. My wife asked me if I was scared. I told her, absolutely not, I told her I was crying because those kids. Because I would be released far before they would. That idea just ripped into me. (I plan to donate my time to thee kinds in some way when I'm up to it - something to do with art/creation/fun)

7 more days of hospital hell. Being poked and prodded every 3 hours, on the hour, 24 hours a day. Drugs, IV's, whatever else. Learning to stand up. Using a breathing apparatus on the hour all day long. Walking the hospital hallway despite a pain that feels as though a knife is protruding fro my stomach. I ask them if this feeling is normal, they tell me that it is, and to push through it. I do, despite feeling like my intestines may burst through my staples at any moment. On my daily walks I see the Westwood skyline out the windows, it seems like a world away as though I may never get out of the hospital. But I'm a grown man, I can deal with this. Those children are dealing with far more than this... 

Finally...15 days later they release me, and I wonder where the hell that month of my life went.

Now I'm at home doing the day by day. Thankful.

*Please send typos to my editor. Thanks.


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## kid-surf (Dec 6, 2009)

One thing I'd like to add is that:

Well, those of you who know me best know what agency my wife works at (Please don't post the name). They were so classy through this entire thing. Many people went out of their way to help my wife and me through this: from pulling favors to get the head of the hospital to me bedside who then set up a plan of attack with my primary Doc (also a UCLA grad) and the surgery team (several people made calls for me in this regard to make sure I was receiving the best care possible), to another agent dropping everything to be by my wife's side during the surgery right along with my family, to the head of the agency checking on me several times and along with several other's at the agency, to many people sending food and/or gift certificates for food service, to other agents taking over my wife's deals no questions asked (creating more work for themselves and longer hours)...and whatever else I'm forgetting to mention. Class-A compassion from a class-A agency...

It's these sorts of things you won't read about in the trades.


Anyway. MUCH LOVE guys, thanks for each of your compassion and well wishes.


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## choc0thrax (Dec 6, 2009)

That's a pretty scary story. Makes the worst thing that happened to me not sound so bad: I had an undiagnosed tooth abscess for 2 horrible months, which can apparently kill you if the infection gets in your brain. For some reason the pain wasn't in my tooth but was shooting through my head like hot lightning. Waited 17 hours in the ER once for a CT scan that showed nothing. I thought I was dying and then my perfectly healthy cat just suddenly died and things were pretty bleak. I lived off Advil all day and tried to knock myself out with a frying pan once which absolutely did not work. Only realized the problem after my face ballooned up from the infection. Had been on antibiotics all through it for something unrelated and stopped them for some reason and that's when the infection was able to grow enough for me to see it.

Your story kinda reminds me of UFC's Brock Lesnar. Early reports said he may have H1N1 and then in like mid November he suddenly had to have intestinal surgery. I think he may have had diverticulitis. He may never fight again because people will just punch him in the gut now.


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## midphase (Dec 6, 2009)

I'm trying to figure out why your cat died.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 6, 2009)

Come to think of it, Kid, forget about the picture. That story doesn't sound like fun - sorry to hear it and glad you're on the mend.

Mattel Children's Hospital....wow, there's a place that puts everything in perspective. About 13 years ago my daughter developed an infection after minor eye surgery that required IV antibiotics, so she - and we - were there for three days. We shared a room one night with a little girl who wasn't going to make it (and I'm sure her parents' marriage was about to collapse under the strain), and the second night with a little boy who was going to have a hemispherectamy - meaning half his brain removed because of severe epilepsy. The amazing thing is that I'm sure he's living close to a normal life today, but there were plenty of other kids there who weren't so lucky...if one can call that lucky.


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## choc0thrax (Dec 6, 2009)

midphase @ Sun Dec 06 said:


> I'm trying to figure out why your cat died.



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## artsoundz (Dec 6, 2009)

Now that's more like it.

glad you are feeling better. we should all take note.

But I know the pain you speak of.I once had a mustache hair get caught in my teeth.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 6, 2009)

Was the walrus okay?


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## RiffWraith (Dec 6, 2009)

The walrus was Paul.


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## rgames (Dec 6, 2009)

Glad to hear you made it through - sounds like you have some great support. That helps a bunch - count your blessings there!

rgames


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## stevenson-again (Dec 7, 2009)

jesus christ kid-surf....


...i had a gammy leg once....


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## kid-surf (Dec 13, 2009)

Making progress... Yesterday, I got outside for the first time with my wife since late Oct. Was great to spend all day outside feeling like a real person - my wife told me to turn my music down - yep things seem to be returning to normalcy.

Choc0 -- Yep, was pretty scary. The next scary part is going in for surgery when I'm not out of my mind in pain but feeling pretty good. That will be strange. Your story sounds pretty scary too, in hindsight. The human body is a little bitch...

Nick -- Ok, I'll trash the polaroid. And here I had it all ready to mail. Agreed, the Mattel Children's Hospital definitely gave me instant perspective. As they wheeled me through the halls, on my way to this test and that, I passed by many children with bald heads and various other terminal afflictions. The look in their eyes was that of "Don't be scared...we aren't". Glad everything worked out for your daughter. Sounds like a profound experience.

artsoundz -- Thanks man. Sorry to hear about your trauma, you are one tough mofo!

Thanks one and all!


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## kid-surf (Dec 21, 2009)

RiffWraith @ Sun Dec 06 said:


> " I almost died "
> 
> Yikes! :shock:
> 
> ...




RiffWraith --

I was just reminded of this thread and it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to say "thanks" to you specifically. 

Yes, you know of what I speak: Hospitals are a trippy place. One aspect I found fascinating was deciphering the politics, the hierarchy. It's as if there is a very distinctive class system, each keeping to their "kind", some looking down their nose at others.

Anyway... thanks man.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 21, 2009)

> Glad everything worked out for your daughter. Sounds like a profound experience.



Thanks, but she just had an infection after what's normally outpatient eye surgery, in fact in an efficient world she wouldn't have had to be in the hospital for IV antibiotics.

The profound part is what we both commented on. It sure puts everything in perspective.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 21, 2009)

And I'm glad you're on the mend.


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## NYC Composer (Dec 27, 2009)

Damn, Kid. I'm late to this story, haven't been on this forum for a while. What a hellish experience. I'm glad you're on the other side of it, and I hope you continue to mend.

I've had health problems as well, so I imagine that like myself, you're at Phase II- being grateful for every effing day you're upright and feeling ok. In my case, that's been going on or quite a while. I wait for it to dissipate, but no. What odd ways we mortals have of receiving blessings, what fragile bags of flesh we really are.

The only fear I have is that you'll lose your edge......ummm.....uhhh.......

NAAAAAAAAAH.

( wink)


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## A/V4U (Dec 27, 2009)

It's horrible to read all the real story. Glad you made it and wish the fast recovery.


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## KingIdiot (Dec 27, 2009)

well something new to write from experiece with 

seriously tho. I'm glad you're ok bro. Shit like this shouldnt have to happen to good people!

I guess since you're hobbling you're gonna have to pick up the guitar and just practice, since you'll have so much time on your hands!

Take care man, and hope you're recovering well!


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