Fairplay

So in the interest of fairness, I'm putting up a post today that's actually a reprint. I found this going through my old emails from many years ago. I'm putting it up here with warts and all. Maybe it's theraputic to relive such an adventure. But probably not.

HEY GROUP!!!

anyway. I'm about to tell you something that may give you nightmares or make you laugh or make you do something that you never thought you'd EVER do. Or maybe it won't do anything to you. Either way, it's gonna be fun for me.

Let's begin now.

Last Saturday night I came home from playing basketball with some of my little brother Adam's friends. I was extremely cold and had a temperature of 102. My mom said that i would be fine. I agreed. That was my first mistake.

The entire next week at school is one that I don't really recall very well. On Tuesday I went to the small Kaiser in Walnut Creek. That was my second mistake. I saw a doctor, or so she claimed. She said that my throat was swollen, my throat was red, and I had a fever. I guess I couldn't tell that already. She had the brilliant idea to take a strep culture to see if I was dieing. On Thursday I found out that it was negative. Then came Friday.

On Friday a lot of non-fun stuff happened. The highlight of my great day came at about 4:50, ten minutes before the vampire section of the little Kaiser closed. They drew about 20 gallons of my blood and then proceeded to beat me to a non-bloody pulp. When I regained conciousness I was ushered to my car where my father was waiting to bring me home.

The reason they wanted to look at my amazing blood was to find out if I had the wonderful illness call mononeucleosis. I wasn't sure when to call back about the "blood test" so I had my maid call for me and was notified that I indeed had mono, much to dismay of all my friends. (HEY GUYS!!)

The next day I woke up to the wonderful world of Ladder Fishing. It's amazing what they put on TNN at 3:30 in the morning on a Sunday. Later that day my dad was to take me to the big Kaiser in Walnut Creek. That was an adventure. You see, MEN never ask for directions. No matter how lost they may be, they'll never admit it or do anything to find their way back but say things like, "I'm not lost" or "It's a shortcut" etc. So we got to Kaiser at 9:00 in the a.m. We got to the right doctors
office at about 9:15-9:20, excellent time. This hospital was really just a converted hotel. But dirtier. Anyways...

We got to the big waiting room where we stayed watching the cartoon networks "Scooby-Doo-a-thon", yea, for about 8 minutes then we were escorted to the smaller waiting room they call the "examinig room" where we sat staring at the diagrams of ears and intestinal tracts for about another 10 minutes before we were graced by the appearance of the wonderful Doctor what's-his-name.

He 'examined' me and said that he would give me a narcotic known as Codine. Then he had enough spare time to give a locker room interview as my dad grilled him with some very intelligent questions. That took around 5 to 6 minutes. Then we got my perscription paper and we were on our way to the main pharmacy of the hospital. (this was, yep, mistake number three.)

We got to the pharmacy and gave the paper to the really not together twenty-something who looked like she would be more at home on a surfer that in a pharmacy, but hey, who am I to judge right. Kaiser knows what they're doing. Anyways...

We got to hear over the PA someone come into the ER, get a respritory expert, then go into the OR, then get a surgen, then another one, then we got our perscription and consulation. This is only about a five line paragraph but it took a really, really long hour for all this to take place.

So at like 11:30 we got to leave that wonderful establishment and go home. On the way home we passed a Christmas tree lot. That has no relevance but I thought that I'd throw it in there anyways.

Time passed slowly, I was still sick with mono. Then on Tuesday came the reason beyond all reasons to hate Kaiser. The doctor that I saw the week before, the blood test on Friday, called to tell me that I had mono. But the first time she called I was asleep so she said that she'd call back and if I was still asleep then to wake me up. She called back and got my mom (sucker) and notified her that I had mono. My mom informed her that we already knew about that. I don't know why the doctor waited so long to call. Yes I do, SHE'S FROM KAISER AND KAISER SUCKS!!!!

moral: What, you want a moral. You're nuts!!

THE END

My wife is getting better daily, she's not taking the painkillers anymore, so they may be available for the right price. Maybe we'll have a garage sale...

Home

My wife finally ended her 12 day stay in the hospital on Friday at 8 pm. It was a very long almost two weeks there, and she's still not quite fully healed from the jaundice, but it's much better and the scores had been going back down. She's much less yellow today than she has been for a while. On the upside, she got 2 mg pills of diloted. She's allowed to take two of these every four hours. She was only allowed 1 mg shots in the hospital. My aunt, who is a nurse, was amazed that she was allowed to have these. To give you an idea of their strength. There's all the pain meds like Vicodin, then there's the much more powerful pain meds like Morphine, then on a whole other higher level of strength, there's diloted. I think that if we still have some left over after she's better, we may be able to sell them for around $75 apiece...if you're interested..unless the authorities are looking at this, then we're just kidding. Totally kidding.

So thanks for the prayers from those of you religious types who said them, they got through.

Good News

We had our first bit of good news from the doctors in a while. She had herself a test today called a Hydroscan. It was needed because her bellyruben (i don't know if that's how you spell it, but it's how they say it) scores weren't getting any better, which means her liver isn't working like it should. So they put her in a full body scanner thing, injected some dye to follow the path of the bile through the body. I'm sure it's an exciting journey, but I've never seen it live. And actually, I still haven't. But the test itself wasn't supposed to take more than an hour. So 3 and a half hours later, she came back. And that long without pain meds was a rough time. They were looking for leaks in her ducts or liver. They suspected that they were the reason that the scores weren't going down is that there was a leak somewhere. But there was no leak, so that was really great news because it meant that she wouldn't have to have the scope sent down her throat again. It meant that there was nothing really wrong, just that her guts are swollen...those are her doctors words. And if you want to know what her really nice doctor looks like, she looks like this...



She seriously does. A great doctor and very nice, but the first time I saw her, she was in the surgeon scrubs and I thought that it was Will Ferrel as Janet Reno. She sounds like her also. So hopefully, hopefully people, we'll be able to have Mommy back home on Thursday.

In T-ball news, I just looked through the equipment bag that was given to me at the first meeting. I noticed that for my team I have two complete catcher's gear sets, three boxes of t-balls, a catcher's mitt, two very old bats, a tee, and two batter's helmets. This presents a problem because every kid running the bases and batting requires a helmet on their little 5 year old heads. So if I have a runner at first and second, the batter doesn't have a helmet, which is in direct violation of the little league rules...which I read...which state that I should have at least 7 helmets. So I guess I'm almost there. Almost...

I looked through the bag because I'm supposed to have our first practice tomorrow, however, it seems like I have about 73 Big Bad Wolves trying to blow my house down, and with them came about 3 feet of rain in approximately 4 minutes. It was one crazy hard downpour. If it continues, I'm not about to make 12 little kids run around and get sick. I've had enough with the sick for a good long while now.

Here's hoping you had a spectacular President's day.

Like a Rolling Stone

A semi-brief update for the concerned internetters out there. My wife is feeling better, though still not home. She's in the hospital until at least tomorrow. But why start at the end? Let's flash back and revisit the past week.

First, the last post where I said the gallbladder was coming out, then the ducts would be cleaned out??...that was wrong. Turns out they needed to clean out her ducts before removing the gallbladder. So, Wednesday they tried to get the stones out of her ducts, but were unsuccessful. She was in that procedure for a long time, and it was all for nothing. So since they couldn't get in from the side they wanted, they needed a tube with a wire that was already inserted so that they could get the stones out.

But how would they get that wire in there? Well, on Thursday we found that the best way was for another doctor to take a long needle and go through her side, through her liver to find the duct that was above the stones. That took over 2 hours, and she was awake for the whole thing. They inserted a catheter into her side and she was very very very unhappy for about a day until the next try by the stone removal specialists.

On Friday they went at it again, this procedure (being done for the second time) was set into motion. This exciting adventure involves a camera on a long flexible tube being inserted down her throat and another little tool going in through her side to get a balloon above the stones. The balloon is inserted deflated and once above the blockage, is inflated and pulled down to move the stones down the duct and out. This time it was successful.

Saturday she was finally able to get her gallbladder removed, the one thing that we were expecting to happen back on Monday. She's feeling better from that now, though not even 80% yet. And since some of her liver tests aren't coming back quite great yet, they're keeping her there until they are sure she's ok.

I've spent the past two nights there at the hospital with her because she's so stiff and drugged. Just to help her out.

Throughout all this my parents have been watching our kids, and they've been doing pretty good. We took them to see her yesterday for the first time, T was find, E was a bit uncertain about the whole experience. But she warmed up to it after she discovered that she could raise and lower Mommy's hospital bed.

So hopefully she'll be able to come home tomorrow. We're really hoping for that. We could use some others hoping for that also.

In other news, I'm having the first T-ball practice on Wednesday...if it doesn't rain. That should be fun.

The Update

Just a quasi-quick-style update on the fun of gallstones. We went in for her appointment with her surgeon on Monday morning at 9:30 and my wife hasn't been able to come home since.

She was sent to the ER that morning, but the E in ER doesn't necessarily mean emergency. We were in that room from about 10:30ish until about 8 p.m. when we finally got into her room. She didn't get admitted until 5:30 and from that point on were told that we'd be going up to her room in just a few minutes. There were a lot of few minute blocks.

The rooms are nice, as hospital rooms go. All the rooms are private with lcd flat screen tv's. She has her own bathroom and a nice big window. Of course she's constantly on pain meds and hooked up to an IV so this isn't quite the valentine's bed and breakfast she was hoping for. Especially since she isn't allowed to eat anything but ice.

We found that she has stones stuck in her ducts. It's all very complicated down there, if you want details, check out webMD. But the stomach, liver, pancreas, and gallstones are all connected with little ducts, and the stones are stuck in there. We were told that they would have to get the stones out before taking the gallbladder, but they spend over 3 hours and couldn't even get into the duct because of the blockage. So tomorrow, sometime, she's having her gallbladder out, and hopefully just after that she'll have the ducts cleaned out and we'll be able to bring her home this weekend. However, the resident who was assisting with the failed duct removal this morning said that they would wait a few days after the gallbladder is out to go back in and clean out the stones. We really hope that this isn't the way it will be.

So I've been spending most of my time at the hospital while my parents have been taking care of the kids. My son T is trying to take advantage of this by creating and changing some of the rules around the house. My personal favorite is his nightly candy. Each night he gets a Flintstone Vitamin, we've always just called it candy. So my dad was trying to find it and uncovered our backlog of Christmas candy. T tried to convince him that the candy was somewhere inside this bag. Even telling my dad that, "I get a lollipop every night. Daddy gives me one before I go to bed." He didn't get the lollipop, but he tried.

I'll be back with more fun medical updates in a couple days. She's doing as well as she can be under the circumstances. Pretty pain free and just exhausted.

Yellow

My lovely wife has been having a tough go of it lately. She had been having what she was told was indigestion for the past year or so, until a couple weeks ago it got so bad that we took her to the emergency room at the local Kaiser. Which was made more fun because of my sons illness. This was the same day that he'd had a fever of 102+. We took her in at around 8:30, which is way past both kids bedtimes, but considering that, they were very good. She went through the ER and they sent her to the minor injury clinic. The doctor there did many tests and had them open up the lab so that she could have blood work done. My sister-in-law came by and allowed me to take the kids home and get them to bed at around 10 or so. My wife didn't get home until almost 11:45. She was told a lot of nothing at the time, but her bloodwork came back negative and she was given a prescription for Vicadon for the pain. The pain didn't go away and she got an ultrasound scheduled and found that she had gallstones. This was about a week after the ER visit.

She then received an appointment for this past Thursday with a surgeon who would inform her of the options that lay ahead, and hopefully a date to have the semi-useless organ removed. Her appt. was at 4:15 in the afternoon. Then at about 9 that morning Kaiser called to let her know that the surgeon would be in surgery all day and therefore would be unable to see her. So we're heading in tomorrow at 9:30 which is NOT going to be cancelled. Better not be. Then tonight, we noticed that she was turning yellow. She has jaundice. I thought that the only people who got that were my newborn children. But no! My wife can get it to. After a useless call to an advice nurse, I called my aunt. She's a real nurse and was much more helpful. Apparently, this is something that can happen to people with gallstones, and she's really ready to get this fixed. And honestly, I am too. Hopefully, tomorrow we'll have better answers about this.

On a happpier note, I bought T his first real glove and bat today. We're totally prepping for t-ball. I was also able to play catch with him, my first official father/son catch. Felt just like Field of Dreams. Except there wasn't a huge corn field around me, and my son is 4 and not 35, and I'm not dead...other than that, just like Field of Dreams.

Reasons Why

Well amigos, there's been a bit of fun at the ol' homestead lately. Fun bullet style points for now, exciting expounding later. mmmmmmmmmK? Super.

• T got sick, a slightly major cold where he got a temp of at least 102. I couldn't get any more out of that one, because that's when he didn't want the thermometer in his mouth anymore. Tylenol helped him out and got the ol' fever down and he started to feel better. Though the cough just went away a day or so ago. That fever was almost two weeks ago.


• My wife then got really sick. And is now on a diet of Popsicles, plain pasta noodles, and fun white rice. Also vicodin, prilosec, and pepcid. Surgery hopefully to come soon.


• My little E got sick from her big brother. Her's didn't have the fever quite as bad, but she doesn't want to sleep through the night (or couldn't) so I'd been waking up at around 12:30 to 2 in the a.m. to tend to her, and getting back to sleep finally at around 4 or so.


• She will mostly call for me from her crib. So I'll hear faint little "Daaaaaaddy"'s from down the hall. Then if I don't come right away, she cries until she can't breathe. So that's fun.


• I managed to get a hold of the cold and now am semi-stuffed up and not altogether 100%.


• We're selling my wife's old car this weekend. It's been about 2 years in the making but we have the buyer and they're coming over Saturday to get it. Hello cash!


• You remember that we signed up T for t-ball? Well, guess who's the manager...yup, me. So I get to run the team of 5 year olds. Honestly, I'm not sure what I've gotten myself into, but I thought it would be fun. I'll let you know how that prediction was in about 4 months.


• I found out that I'm not registered for either party. Probably because when I registered, Clinton had been sleeping with everybody and I wasn't a big fan of a president who would be impeached, (good luck to the wife), and also because Norm McDonald was doing his impeccable impressions of Bob Dole on SNL. I didn't know this before Super Tuesday. So I didn't get to vote for who I wanted. And so as not to bring to much politics into this. I'm not Backing Barack, nor am I Hocking Hillary. I believe it was said best in 30 Rock. "I'll say I'm supporting Obama all the way, but I'll secretly vote for McCain."


• I don't have another one really, but I'd already added the code for this list item and didn't want to delete it.
  

Now all these will be expanded upon if I feel like it later. But until then, I'm hoping things will start flowing better for the clan. I'm having a team meeting for my t-ball parents on Saturday afternoon and hopefully we'll finally get to see a surgeon for my wife on Monday. We were supposed to see her yesterday, but such is life in Kaiser. But I'm still looking forward to seeing Glen Phillips on the 17th. Hopefully I'll be able to go.