One More Post

There is just too much life right now--which is good, I am just having time to write which is bad. I just wanted atleast one more post for October.

Getting back in the game!

Looking down on the new cushion and armrests of the refurbished power chair.

I am up! In fact that been up most of the day since rising this morning at about 10:30 AM. I'm actually trying to a crease my ability to be up since I'm trying to get back to work this coming Monday morning. I didn't go back to work last Thursday obviously, Dianne and myself did not think my skin ready yet. I'm a little bit concerned about how slow this healing process has been and I must point out how much Dianne's positive attitude has been to be during this healing process. I freely admit I've been close to throwing in the towel--I just don't see my physical well-being been that much better in the coming weeks and months years. I hope I way off on this and that all medical attention I've drained off system last few weeks will make the difference into my ability to work till February and my retirement. But I have found out in this amount of time I've been off work I'm ready for retirement I don't need the guilt of work anymore or should I say the guilt of not being work anymore. I mean given the opportunity I would not return to work now even if my butt heels of hundred percent. I know that's extremely shallow but it's true.

So I've been in bed almost the entirety of the last 10 to 14 days it's been hard but I keep to myself extended time down will be more than worth it with the ability to be up and ability to work in the coming weeks and months. I don't think I would've made the laying ordeal nearly as well as I did if not for my tablet and technology and access to the Internet made the days of bed rest bare-able. I think being able to connect hourly with Facebook or twitter allowed me to survive. I'm still a little worried as to the durability of my butt but as things would have it the insurance went for the rehabbing of my wheelchair particularly with the new cushion. The cushion looks pretty good except it's huge, sitting very high in the chair. I know this is how it has to be but I'm really concerned of my ability to be able to transfer up to this new cushion. I think, I will be able to make the lift eventually, but it will take some time I believe in getting to that point.

Tomorrow I will actually get dressed and try to figure out how to mount the new cushion. I'm hoping the cushion is so good that my butt healing process might even continue even while sitting in the chair at work. I don't know if I want to play the card of been so fragile that I have to leave work early in the day to get home get off my ass but maybe if things seem rough getting back into the swing of everything.

Not to be too cheeky but seems like I might be getting back in the game sure hope so because I'm feeling the game getting back in me.

A Gift

 

 

 

 

It is Sunday afternoon a little after one o'clock and it's about time you go back down to my bed for another day of healing by staying off my butt, almost all week now I've been on bed rest for more to the point butt rest. I know it sounds quaint but this is one of the most difficult things I've had to do in quite a while. I know, I should be thankful, that I can resolve this issue, this medical issue of butt cellulitis I just stayed in bed--for however long it takes. I mean no surgery, little hospital time not bad, enough annual and sick leave to cover whatever you need. I really am blessed I should act more thankful for dodging a major bullet as I did but still there is a part of me that sees the days outside my window, even the rainy cold days and am resentful have spent a major portion of this beautiful autumn, down in bed quietly listening clock tick tock the day away. I really feel this sick time has been good for me. I am doing a little life valuation and realize I may have just come to a fork in the road and made a decision to live. Now, I just have to figure out how to live under a new regime of physical conditioning or lack of physical positioning. Trite as it may sound, I have been given the gift I just need to figure out how to best use this gift.

It's Sunday afternoon and I must return to the bed shortly for quiet sunny Sunday afternoon of reading and napping and fighting to keep my spirits up. I'm being such a boob I really damn lucky.

This last week has been a spooky, spooky ride--the whole thing from how fast the cellulitis developed to being hospitalized, to be an inpatient at University Hospital. But what was really spooky to me was how severe my illness became and how quick and how relatively okay I felt during this whole process. This event is really frightening me I'm still sifting through a lot of what happened, and what really happen happen the way that it happened. I came away from that institution, quite frankly, frightened of not one particular area of the whole complex after-hours during the darkness something malignant moves at the University hospital. I would never have believed it had I not experienced it firsthand. Interestingly enough I've heard this before, not necessarily the specific words, from other folks with spinal cord injuries that I work with in the past. They hated the place, and I couldn't figure out why now I know. The whole place is Stephen King novel wait to be written.

Early this week, meet appointment with my practitioner under the direction of the docs that looked over me during my days in the hospital. I really thought Katia would send me back to the job: wrong! In fact my practitioner sent to me to 10 more days in bed on believable. So on the way back to bed after being up for bit be down for the rest of the day. I really try to be compliant it's really hard on me but there I go.

OH. Before I forget the image I have chosen for this post is an image Dianne took of me in the emergency room. Literally seconds before this picture was taken my blood pressure was great as having no problems then all the sudden I spiked a monstrous blood-pressure--I didn't feel bad I would have known if it happened than not that either the time, naked and Diane witnessing the red bloom exploding on my chest. I look a lot worse in this image then I really felt but it sure was an eye-opener to me that something was happening that I should take very seriously.

Code!!!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjzY2UvyztI&feature=g-upl

 

The Amazing Gamma Rays with Kerry the head free radical

So much has happened since I last posted , where to begin actually, forgot that I did a mini post at some point during the hospital experience because I did not want to get too far behind and I feel folks out there wanted to know my disposition.

So it all began last Friday night, not this Friday night but the Friday night before, DD and I have been out, to concert of sorts, of an old band he used to support: the Gamma Rays. It was a great evening but not quite what we expected, somewhat disheartening but still not that--I think I read a post regarding that evening very soon that evening deserves posting. But on the return home and getting ready for bed DeeDee on checking my rear end noticed a raised hard lump. The lump was not there the night before so there was some concern. So, I knew this would be another lost weekend and I would be in bed until next Monday in hopes that my butt would refresh the hard nasty tissue turned something. So the following Saturday was spent in bed and the lump grew and DeeDee and I both became concerned and when Sunday morning came and I was no better not worse we decided to drop in to the local InstaCare and have them lance the artifact. So the concern worsened when the medic at the doc in the box wouldn't even touch me. He directed me posthaste the University hospital where" they can handle this that's what they are there for." So, we trundled up to the University on a perfect fall after.

Actually, the emergency room went swiftly but to my surprise they did not lance my bottom but admitted my butt. It seemed like I had a major cellulitis, was running a fever blood pressure was up and I was kind of in the danger. All the above I did not want to hear a perfect fall afternoon. Thankfully DD was at my side the entire time acted as my advocate when I really needed one worship me to act the my own but I didn't either way we working as a team. Now of course I was admitted to Medicine, where they did okay stuff all the right stuff for sick able-bodied person like I got the oppression the you know what or how to deal with the guy wheelchair specifically quad. But, we muddled through and they began to administer bag after bag after bag of antibiotics liquid death from above work organisms inside. Each bag took about seven hours drift through due to the intensity of antibiotics death they said they learned to do this is when group quicker the veins burned, literally! Add on to this, every much into turning me every two hours which is the old hospital joke" wake patient and see if he's tired?" I thought the attorney was an issue of pressure release but it was explained to me that the turning also My blood next up so clots would have a more difficult for me--great to know. So, I saw Sunday night dawn into Monday morning and experienced appraiser professionals like I've never seen. It seemed like every hour a new professional would walking, introduce themselves, asked essentially the same questions as the ones for. They were all kids--I know this is a learning hospital but still--the docks from medicine, folks from rehab, folks from OT, social work and on and on and on. Since my name begins with S that means my food delivered and" S" time meaning cold food that should be hot, bread that has gone to crust everything seems to be tasteless. Granted that may have been me and my taste buds loaded with antibiotic.

Monday night drifted into Tuesday morning on a river of death. It seems one of my nurses whom I shall call Nurse Mengele was skilled at lethal one-liners set to kill any conversation. Nurse Mengele was dark foreboding and work the night shift--night shift itself spooky especially in hospital the size of the University medical center. DeeDee and I fulfilled menacing nature of Nurse Mangele which we did not even share each other till the following day in the darkness I was terrified. I kind of still think I should be looking over my shoulder. Tuesday was filled with more drip antibiotics the hordes of medicine. However seem to be responding and seemed might be able to leave the following day Wednesday. That sometime during the afternoon Surgery showed up-- clearly the house superstars referred to as Seinfeld  and Costanza hemmed and Hawed through me on my side, poked and decided, bedside surgery, this point nothing seems to phase me I just said sure go for it and they did. Now this" surgery " was nothing more than lancing the mass to see if there were any pockets of fluids drained. Now since my arrival to the hospital I had been spiking temperatures some as high as 104° and the word from the docs and the surgeons was that if I could go 24 hours without a temperature above normal I could go home I had a goal.

I was sure by the time you suffer through another night on the Dark Ward that I had done my tenants and penance and I would be let go. The surgeons were in bright and early Wednesday morning and said look good so will keep the another day just to be sure, just to be sure. I felt" okay" have done this much why not another day. Half an hour later the medicine docs came and said I could go home I had ~what surgery said clearly medicine did not like that but surgery rules..DeeDee went home to shower and take a fast nap. How she was gone, the comedy team surgery: Seinfeld and Constanza waltzed back in my room and said I could go home--I was delighted. I was released with a bag full, a brown paper bag full, of oral drugs equivalent to what they've been dreaming in my arms for the past couple days. I was to keep on this regimen for the next couple of days or weeks whatever I was gone.

It was kind of weird as soon as the decision has been made that I was leaving, no more room interruptions from anybody medical which is all right by me. Dianne needed sleep so I hung around till fourish escaped together. Home, home, home.

Now, I am surprised that I definitely feel something dark lurks at University medical center a stigma as dark and foreboding as any Stephen King novel. I don't want to go back not even to rehab but I'm going have to that's where my insurance tells me to go. I think if I go during the light I'll be okay. Good to be home with Dianne, I seem to be getting better more so that I am anticipating returning to work tomorrow--shall see. This is a capsule of what happened on my hospitalization I'm sure I'll discuss things deeper in the near future is one to get this much out thank you all for being so patient.

Seriously, I have been the hospital sincs Sunday night, where we ended up after going to the local doc in a box and they would not touch  me,saying i needed some where to be if things got serious,guess what? Things got serious. I developed a cellulitus on my right hip--not good if you spend a major part of your day sitting up on butt.

In fact a covy of surgeons just left

 my bedside wherre they did a little work lancing the wound,a bit painful but not bad.