The good, the bad, and the ugly

It was a year ago today that I had my pancreatitis attack. I've written a fair bit about it - an article on the original attack, a fun one about all my different roommates, some numbers regarding my hospital stay, and a three-part series on my time in the hospital before and after surgery and my recovery at home. Obviously this was not the ideal way to spend the winter, but being the glass-half-full kinda guy that I am, I've come up with some good things about my experience. But along with the good comes the bad and in some cases, the ugly.

Good: Lost the ten pounds that I wanted to lose!
Bad: Lost thirty more.
Ugly: Me. I looked like a skeleton for a while.

Good: Had Jello every day. My eight-year-old thinks that daddy's time in the hospital sucked, "but at least you got Jello!"
Bad: Had Jello every day.

Good: Education is always a good thing, and I learned more about what a gallbladder does.
Bad: Don't have one anymore.

Good: Met lots of friendly and helpful nurses.
Bad: Swabs twice a week.
Ugly: Don't ask where they were swabbing.

Good: Lots of free time to watch the Vancouver Olympics!
Bad: On a 9" TV with headphones.
Ugly: And a feeding tube up my nose.

Good: On Valentine's Day, I got a banana popsicle as part of my lunch.
Bad: It was the closest thing to solid food I'd had in a week or would have for another four weeks.

Good: Lots of time to read books.
Bad: Spilled bile on one. Ewwwwwww.

Good: Had a bunch of interesting roommates. See link to my roommates article above.
Bad: One was a clinically depressed homeless drunk drug addict. And he wasn't even a friendly clinically depressed homeless drunk drug addict.
Ugly: Another was forcibly secured to his bed because he had a breakdown and threatened nurses with a pencil.

Good: Canada! Free healthcare! Paid for nothing but the TV, internet, and phone in my room.
Bad: The TV cost about $90 / week. I cancelled it the week after the Olympics ended.

Good: Used text messages to converse with my sister from my hospital room.
Bad: The text auto-completion on my phone still thinks that any word beginning with "c" is "CT scan".

Good: Able to get wireless internet in my room.
Bad: The bandwidth wasn't good enough to watch streaming video and the TV didn't get TSN2, so I missed almost the entire 2010 NLL season.

Good: I gained back all the weight that I lost.
Bad: I didn't want it all back.
Ugly: I gained back more than I lost.

Good: I'm feeling back to normal now.
Bad: My eating habits aren't as healthy as they should be, and I don't exercise as often as I should. Yup, back to normal.