Transcript
Speaker: another episode of Dirty Briefs.
Speaker: Welcome back everybody.
Speaker: It's Alex Hooper and this episode is
Speaker: There's gonna be some trigger warnings because I'm gonna talk about my time in the hospital.
Speaker: 33 days, November 17th, I went in and December 19th, 2022, I got out.
Speaker: That is the length of a menstrual cycle.
Speaker: That is an insane amount of time to spend in a medical facility where you are unable to leave.
Speaker: And I realize not a lot of people have spent the night in a hospital.
Speaker: A lot of people have.
Speaker: Too many probably.
Speaker: But I wanted to go over what happened to me.
Speaker: Because I've been pretty transparent about my cancer diagnosis and what I was going through, chemotherapy.
Speaker: But what happened to me in the hospital...
Speaker: There's a lot, and I'm going to warn you right now, some of this is going to be kind of scary, kind of sad, but I'm going to make it as fun as possible for you to listen to these stories.
Speaker: If you listened to the last episode, you heard about multiple embolisms causing my brain to go into stroke mode and me not even knowing my own name.
Speaker: Hollywood Presbyterian medical facility where homeless people go to scream.
Speaker: I do not mean that as a hyperbole.
Speaker: It is the loudest.
Speaker: hospital I've ever been in in my life.
Speaker: Part of it is that there's a lot of unhoused people in Hollywood.
Speaker: And when it gets to wintertime, whenever something goes wrong, they immediately go in there to get a little refuge from the cold.
Speaker: So it ends up being a lot of
Speaker: crazy, psychotic behavior that is mixed in with all of the care you are getting.
Speaker: Now, the staff at Hollywood Presbyterian was actually absolutely amazing.
Speaker: I have nothing but good things to say about them.
Speaker: However, if you're in any place like that for 33 days, you're going to lose your mind, especially when your mind is barely there at all.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: What did I learn after I had the stroke?
Speaker: First of all, the stroke was caused from the surgery from my port-a-cath.
Speaker: They had done a surgery a couple months before so that I would have a little chemo port under my chest and...
Speaker: Unfortunately, it got infected.
Speaker: I had no way of knowing that because I can't see what's underneath my skin.
Speaker: Unfortunately, my x-ray vision does not work as properly as it should.
Speaker: So, the infection starts in my port-a-cath, but it quickly spreads.
Speaker: And I learned in the hospital that I had what is called endocarditis, a vegetation in my heart.
Speaker: If you don't know what that is, that is an inflammation of the inside lining of the heart chambers and the heart valves.
Speaker: So, not good.
Speaker: My blood is not pumping as well as it should.
Speaker: On top of that, that's what then spread to my brain, causing the multiple embolisms.
Speaker: But what caused all of this was sepsis.
Speaker: My blood turned to poison.
Speaker: Sepsis can kill a person within 12 hours.
Speaker: And when I went to the hospital, if I hadn't gone that day, if my wife and my friends had not taken me that night, I would be dead.
Speaker: And this would be a very different podcast.
Speaker: A silent podcast.
Speaker: Sepsis is gross.
Speaker: You feel disgusting.
Speaker: You're so out of it.
Speaker: There's a lot of different signs of it.
Speaker: You know, you'll start being disoriented, dizzy.
Speaker: You'll feel weak.
Speaker: You'll have a hard time breathing.
Speaker: It's very confusing, but you don't know what's happening because your brain and all of your vital organs are shutting down at the same time.
Speaker: So other people had to see it in me.
Speaker: If I had lived alone, I'd have lived alone.
Speaker: I would have paid the tab on this life, and it would not have been pretty, everyone.
Speaker: The first few days in that hospital are such a blur.
Speaker: I don't remember anything.
Speaker: I know they did a surgery to remove the porticath.
Speaker: I know my LA Times article came out that week.
Speaker: Just because all of the doctors and nurses came in holding it, very excited.
Speaker: I could not share in their joy because I was hanging on for dear life.
Speaker: My body, it...
Speaker: It's called edema.
Speaker: Your body swells due to water and fluids being trapped in your tissues.
Speaker: So I gained like 15 to 20 pounds of straight water weight.
Speaker: Everything puffed up like I was a fish.
Speaker: And I just suddenly...
Speaker: felt so awful.
Speaker: It was terrible.
Speaker: I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.
Speaker: I didn't know what was going on and it made blood work so awful.
Speaker: Part of what I was going through meant that I had to have blood work done every single day and they would do it at 6 a.m., the worst time.
Speaker: There was no sleeping whatsoever.
Speaker: I was bedridden for the first two and a half weeks
Speaker: And I couldn't have been more swollen.
Speaker: I felt like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker: Like, you're turning Violet, Violet.
Speaker: I was just going... And it was awful.
Speaker: Awful.
Speaker: I mean, not leaving my bed...
Speaker: not seeing the sun for 33 days.
Speaker: All I saw was through a window.
Speaker: I couldn't go outside.
Speaker: I am a child of nature.
Speaker: I love being outdoors.
Speaker: And here I am stuck in this facility.
Speaker: Terrible food,
Speaker: Can't go outside.
Speaker: Barely sleeping.
Speaker: And they are loading me with drugs.
Speaker: I'm talking Dilaudid.
Speaker: If you don't know about Dilaudid, it is four times more powerful than morphine.
Speaker: And they kept upping my dose.
Speaker: And I became like a fiend in there.
Speaker: I understand...
Speaker: heroin addicts a little bit better now because I was chasing the dragon of that Dilaudid every single time they would put it in.
Speaker: I had two hours in between every dose and I was just clamming for it by the time they got in because the first 10 seconds when they shove it through your IV and they push down on that syringe, you have just have this, oh, wow.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: And nothing matters anymore after that.
Speaker: I was silent during this time.
Speaker: People thought I was dead.
Speaker: That's a lot.
Speaker: I post on social media most days, and all of a sudden when I'm not answering texts and I'm not posting anything, people knew I had cancer.
Speaker: They just assumed the worst.
Speaker: And it was the worst.
Speaker: I was going through the worst possible things.
Speaker: Sepsis still kills one out of five people that get it.
Speaker: Today,
Speaker: In 2023, with all of the marvels of modern medicine, people are still dying from sepsis constantly.
Speaker: This is terrifying.
Speaker: But I was so out of it, I didn't even know to be terrified.
Speaker: I was just miserable laying in a bed watching the same 25 channels again just flipping through, please give me something.
Speaker: I couldn't even read.
Speaker: My brain was not strong enough to be able to focus on anything.
Speaker: So I would just lay there all day.
Speaker: It was awful.
Speaker: It was so awful.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I hid from this for a long time because honestly, guys, I still haven't processed all of this.
Speaker: When so many bad things happen at once, when you have a VIP pass to the all-you-can-eat tragedy buffet, you don't have time to keep clearing your plate and eating everything.
Speaker: You just keep piling more and more on top of it, and you say, I will get to that later.
Speaker: I promise I will, but right now, survival is all I can think about.
Speaker: I need to get through this, get to the other side of whatever all of this is.
Speaker: I don't even know what's on the other side.
Speaker: It could be more tragedy.
Speaker: But all I know is I have to survive right now for the sake of myself, for my wife, for my family, for my friends, for everybody in the world that wants me to still be here.
Speaker: And even for the few that don't, especially for the ones that don't want me to be here.
Speaker: Oh, it feels so sweet to still be alive, rubbing it in your face.
Speaker: stroking it all over your body like my brain stroked out on me.
Speaker: I have a lot to think about moving forward because there was so much traumatic pain, not just physical, but emotional and spiritual pain.
Speaker: I went through it while I was in there.
Speaker: And there's a lot I could say on this, but it's a dirty brief.
Speaker: We got to be quick about this.
Speaker: This is only part one of this episode.
Speaker: There will be a part two next week.
Speaker: So I do hope you tune in.
Speaker: And I don't want you to be scared when you're listening to this because obviously you know that I'm here.
Speaker: I made it, everybody.
Speaker: I'm on.
Speaker: I'm not on the other side.
Speaker: I'm still very much cutting my way through the forest of brambles like the prince in Sleeping Beauty.
Speaker: I know I have to get somewhere, but there are miles of thorns in my way.
Speaker: And I'm going to get pricked a lot.
Speaker: More than a sexy dude at a Turkish bathhouse.
Speaker: I am going to get pricked.
Speaker: More than I did every single day at Hollywood Presbyterian.
Speaker: Please follow me on social media, everyone.
Speaker: At Hooper Hairpuff on all social media.
Speaker: HooperComedy.com.
Speaker: Tour dates are coming back.
Speaker: I'm loving it.
Speaker: doing this podcast and I hope you're enjoying it too.
Speaker: Bite-sized little nuggets of Alex Hooper, whatever I feel like giving you that week.
Speaker: Stay tuned for more.
Speaker: Please subscribe.
Speaker: Share this episode if it means something to you, if it spoke to you in any way.
Speaker: Because I'm going to be here for a long time, everybody.
Speaker: If sepsis, strokes, a heart vegetation couldn't take me down, well, wait till you hear what I go through in the next episode.
Speaker: Stay tuned, everyone.
Speaker: I'll see you there.
