Updates and Endings

I have been out of the hospital for over a week at this point and generally feeling much better.

The let me go home Friday at noon and I first went by the heart doctors office and they put a heart rate monitor on me. This thing is no fun at all. Always getting in the way or tangled, or pulled off. They want me to wear it for 30 days. Not happening.

When they took me off the iv antibiotic they put me on a pill called doxycyclene, which is a weaker antibiotic but still fairly strong. It is actually the treatment for Lyme disease (I don't have it - they tested me!) and anthrax. However, the side effects are sometimes interesting. Mostly headaches, but you can be photosensitive while on it too. I have 2 more days of it to go and I will be done with it.

The surgery incision seems to have stopped closing up at the rate it was to start. Now it seems to be the same size every day. Still having to pack it with gauze each morning. However it is not deep enough to hold much so it mainly just falls back out during the day. Hopeful that it will close up soon and make my life easier...

The leg bite is still open and a little black looking underneath. Not sure that it is healing very well but it is also not getting worse. Basically just putting some gauze over it with some kind of absorbent pad right over the bite.

I'm slowly getting back my strength and gaining some weight back. I lost 23 pounds between hiking and the hospital. Not sure of the exact numbers but I think it was 8 pounds on the trail and the rest in the hospital.

I went back to work Monday for about 3 hours and then worked almost my regular hours Tuesday. The rest of the week I was there full time. It was tiring but not too bad or to the point of exhausting me. I am actually glad to have something to do after 2 weeks of boredom.

As I said previously, my trip is officially over. Highly disappointing, but life happened. I started thinking about what I could do instead and have come up with a few things.

Later in the summer I will be taking a railfanning trip up to North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Planning on stopping in at Spencer, Horseshoe Curve, and Roanoke. As part of that trip I want to at least do trail magic in the area that my hiking friends will be in. That will probably be northern Virginia to southern Pennsylvania. So basically the same area I will be in already.

The other new thing I will be doing is going back to school to get my master's degree. I have already started the applications process for Middle Georgia State University for the Master's in Information Technology program they will be starting this fall. I will be the very first class to go through this program. How cool will that be?

Anyways, that ends the story of my 2015 Appalachian Trail thru hike attempt. Needless to say I would rather be out on the trail still, but I am looking at it like it was just not meant to be this year. Who knows, 2017 is looking pretty empty on my calendar...