Please pardon this interruption

We interrupt this blog for the following important message:

Help!

Does anyone know a good ERISA attorney? I need a lawyer for my long term disability insurance claim and I thought if I posted someone who knew a lawyer might just happen to find it.

That's all.

Thanks.


We now return you to your regular programming.

Famous first words

I am not early with this, but the winners of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. I am also surprised that Word spell-check recognizes Bulwer-Lytton. Anyway, go here http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm for the tragic consequences of this contest.

Like the proverbial train-wreck, it is a thing not to be turned away from once it has been revealed to your eyes. The deed of exposing this travesty this day falls to me. I do not shirk the doing of this deed, rather I face it with my resolve firmed and my tongue planted firmly in my cheek (I have to ask one of my doctors about that). I may have to submit an entry of my own to this thing one day.

Friends

My exhausting week ended in a very nice way. On Saturday, some friends came over and took me out to lunch. This is no small deal since they all live a good distance away, and besides the effort and time to get to my house, these days that costs a lot in gas.

It was great. Nothing fancy, just lunch, but it was great to see them again. It really jumpstarts my brain to sit with these guys and talk. I loved it. It was exhausting, but I sure do appreciate them coming over. It was fun and I think I’ve run out of adjectives.

Thanks guys, it was great.

I don’t keep in touch as much as I would like, and my current condition just makes my tendency to be a hermit that much worse. One of these days I’ll be able to make it to where they all live.

Thanks again, let’s do it again soon.

Whoo boy what a week

Yes, I am still alive, I just dropped off the face of the planet for a while. It was a rough week, I'll have to tell you about it some time.

First I have to thank someone who might not want to be named, then again, maybe they would. Anyway, this person has been very helpful and just plain, old-fashioned kind. They have also given me so much information that I have been overwhelmed with it all. It’s going to take me a while to just figure out what it all is. I am still trying to get my head around all of it.

Now, just to round things out …

There was one anniversary this week: on August 9^th 2005 my heart stopped. It started again, but I suppose you already guessed that – but it did it on its own.

The rest of this is a day late and a dollar short.

Wednesday was Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday, for what that’s worth. I always liked his movies, still do in fact.

An inordinate number of famous people were born yesterday, a partial list includes:

Buddy Greco
Dash Crofts (Seals and Crofts)
David Crosby
Steve Martin
Susan Saint James
Danielle Steel (book store shelf stocker)
Gary Larson (philosopher)
James Horner (film composer)
Magic Johnson
Marcia Gay Harden
Sarah Brightman (Olympic greeter)

and Cosimo III, 6th duke of Tuscany

Don’t even ask about today.

Oh well, I have to run. I have to find a ride to Yasgur’s Farm.

Score!

As in I just hit doctor visit number 20 over the last 11 weeks.

Then I came home and fell asleep. I am beat.

Right now I’m watching people wave flags and march into the Olympic stadium in Beijing. At least I am watching the recorded images of what happened about 12 hours ago. Yes, I watch the opening ceremonies, even the boring parts. It’s an old tradition. I used to watch the Olympics with my father and I like to watch the significant moments. The whole time zone issue has kept me from watching a lot of it in recent years, though I hear that they are scheduling things early to be on in prime time in the US.

One year I saw them show a tape of the finals of a track and field event because they had been showing a taped profile of an athlete while the race was being run live and then they showed the recorded race minutes after it was on live. Yes, they preempted a live event to show a tape and then showed the race on tape. Of course that was one of the years that Bryant Gumbel got more airtime than the athletes. I once fast-forwarded through a 6 hour tape and found 15 minutes of actual sports, the rest was talking and commercials. Hopefully this year will be better.

Interesting things I have learning watching the opening ceremonies of the 29th Olympiad: China has only one time zone for the entire country, and highland bagpipes are the international music for marching athletes.

Now, if they’d only add my idea for two new sports: double-dutch jump rope and knife fighting. I’m still undecided about javelin catching.

August 6th, 2005, revisited

I am a day late with this and I apologize. I wasn’t going to post about the daily events of me in the ICU, but then I remembered an important date.

August 6 was the third anniversary of the day I was transferred from one hospital to another.

That in and of itself was not anything that I was going to post about, but I remembered something that needed to be said, and I am ashamed that I did not do this sooner. This is the third anniversary of the second time my wife saved my life that year.

At this point I already had ARDS and sepsis on top of the Legionnaires’ Disease and my body was shutting down. My wife is very intelligent and perceptive, and when she saw the numbers for my kidney values, the blood work that indicated how well – or not – my kidneys were functioning, she knew how bad it was. The doctors were saying that I was doing bad but not that bad, but she knew that my kidneys were failing. They said I would need dialysis, but they didn’t have the right equipment at that hospital, but my transfer could wait until Monday.

You see, it was Saturday, and the doctors just didn’t want to be bothered. By Monday I would have been dead.

My wife spent something like 10 hours on the phone, making dozens of calls to doctors and hospitals trying to get me transferred to a hospital with continuous dialysis equipment. The nurses at the hospital were quietly encouraging. They had hinted that they thought that I needed to be transferred and they were cheering my wife on as she hounded the doctors to get them to do what needed to be done. They practically cheered when she did it. Apparently it is not common to transfer patients on the weekend – patients may die but at least the doctors aren’t inconvenienced. Assholes.

First, not having a dialysis machine that is needed to save the life of a patient in the ICU who has sepsis, which is a very common problem in ICU patients, is criminal. The other campus of the hospital had it, which meant that they could claim to have all that equipment in the hospital with that name, but that meant transferring me, which they didn’t want to do.

Not wanting to be bothered transferring a patient because it’s a weekend is criminal.

We knew from a friend who is a nurse that there was an ICU bed available at a good hospital not too far away. But it was being held by a prominent doctor in case he wanted it for one of his patients. Not a patient that needed an ICU bed and care, just a patient who would want special care to stroke their ego. Criminal.

It was also almost impossible to get the doctors to call the other hospital to arrange the transfer, even after my wife found an available ICU bed. Criminal.

From Saturday morning until late evening, my wife was on the phone to hospitals and doctors and friends and she did the virtually impossible: she got me transferred. It was supposed to happen by 10PM, but didn’t happen until 1 or 2 AM. First they said they couldn’t have me and all of the equipment in the helicopter because it would weigh too much. Right, the extra weight of a portable ventilator would push the helicopter over its usable limit. It was an insurance worry. They weren’t sure they were covered for the procedure – me on the vent, and having a respiratory tech in the helicopter.

Finally I was transferred in an ambulance. And here I must commend the respiratory technicians at the hospital. They knew how bad I was and they did everything possible to insure that I was not injured during the transfer. I needed high pressure ventilation, but a standard ventilator wouldn’t fit in the ambulance. There’s a lot less room in there than you might think, and I was too unstable to risk manual ventilation. One of the techs remembered that the hospital had recently acquired a high-pressure pediatric ventilator, which was small enough to fit, so he went and got it.

So, on a Saturday night, my wife got me transferred to another hospital where I was admitted to the ICU, and immediately put on dialysis. Like I said, she saved my life.

Just as an example of my wife’s determination and ability, she actually got in touch with the head of the ICU department at the new hospital. This may not sound like much, but he is an internationally known leader in the field of critical care. He runs national programs on ICU care and new methods to increase survival. His reputation is such that he has been called on to treat royalty. He gave my wife his private cell phone number so she could call if she needed anything.

My wife is an amazing person, but I repeat myself.

Now presenting Miss Lili von Shtupp

I wasn’t going to post because I was really tired after today’s doctor visit*, and I didn’t have much to say. Then I was thinking to myself, I’m tired.

The next thing you know I had Madeline Kahn’s voice in my head.

OK, I think that’s weird enough to post.

For those of you who do not know the reference (and why don’t you?), here is a link to the root of my insanity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au5f6pMgN2s OK, it’s probably not the root, but it fits into it.

*Number 19 in a continuing series that began the end of May.

Three!

This just in, Mr. Owl says that it takes three licks to get to the center of a Tootise Roll Pop.

Film at eleven.

Sorry, I just felt like posting something silly.

August 2nd, 2005, revisited

No, not every post is going to be a revisiting of a day from 2005. For one thing, after today I don’t remember anything until September. For another, I doubt that anyone cares that much about it and I don’t want to dwell on anything. I just wanted to make a point of noting the significant dates this year, mostly because this is the start of this blog – more or less – and I also wanted to collect the information in one place where people could see it if they wanted to. So here’s another.

This is the third anniversary of the day that I was intubated.

I remember a conversation, only vague images really, but some of the discussion. Someone was explaining that I wasn’t getting enough oxygen and they needed to do something to help. They said they could try a CPAP machine, but if that didn’t work they’d have to put me on a ventilator. The CPAP was like trying to breathe with my head hanging out the window of a car doing about 95 mph. I couldn’t tolerate it, it was worse than no help at all.

So there I was, facing intubation. It’s hard for me to explain why this would be so hard for me. Mostly it’s the idea of having something in the way of my breathing. Yes, I know this was meant to help, but having an obstruction in my throat just doesn’t seem like it would help. But I knew, at some fever-addled level, that there was no choice. I told them to go ahead. I sort of remember that.

I know that I said that I wanted to be completely sedated before they either intubated me or used a paralytic. My wife made sure that they did that and that there was no pain (I may have asked about that, too). And she tells me that I also told her not to let my mother see my like that. I don’t remember that but I can believe it. Eventually she did see me that way because it lasted a lot longer than the three days everyone expected.

Three years ago today I was put on a ventilator. I have to think about that for a while.

I feel much better today than I did then.

August 1st, 2005, revisited

Today is the third anniversary of the day I went into the hospital.

My wife finally dragged me to the doctor, who took one look at me and got a pulse oximeter. I guess I looked pretty bad. My oxygen level was 87. At the time I didn’t know how bad that was, but I could tell from the Physician’s Assistant’s expression that it was not good. I was trying to will it to go higher, but that didn’t work. She told us that we had two choices: drive ourselves or take an ambulance but I had to go to the hospital. We decided on the ambulance so the PA called 911.

I don’t remember much else from that day. Well, I remember one thing. I was very hot, which is not surprising considering I had a fever of at least 105. I had a small hand-held fan that I was holding on myself, and the batteries were running down. I was desperately in need of that fan. I could not imagine surviving without it. So I asked – well, I probably begged – my wife to get me some new batteries.

I thought that I was laying on the sofa in the living room and all she had to do was walk into the kitchen to get me some batteries.

I was actually laying in a hospital bed in the ER. No one had any batteries. My wife had to leave the ER, drive to a nearby WaWa, buy batteries and then get back to me in the ER. I did not know that. As horrible as I felt I would never have asked her to do something like that, but I did ask her, and she did it. Have I mentioned that I have a wonderful wife?

I have a wonderful wife.

This is also the third anniversary of the first time that year that my wife saved my life. If she had not forced me to go to the doctor, dragging me there, I would have died lying on the sofa at home.

She really is amazing.

Only the name has been changed...

... to make more sense.

"It's eating my peas." is a very obscure quote that I chose as the name largely for silliness purposes and because it is obscure. I thought it might make more sense for the blog name to match the URL, so I've changed it.

I may change it again later, who knows. This thing is still pretty young, or is that new? Whatever. This is in no way a sign of any changes here, so don't get your hopes up. The content will be about the same. Well, I hope some of it is better, but I think you get what I mean.