Our Cats

Here is a video that I created of our cats, Hershey and Mocha.

Defying Gravity

This post is coming much later than it should. Wanna know why? Well, I'll tell you.

I was sitting messing about on the Internet last night, and made the decision to write my nightly blog posting. So, I go to start, and notice that it isn't auto-saving. My blog editor is saying that it doesn't have a connection to the blogging server anymore. I try other websites, and find no response. Giving a quick call to Mediacom customer service confirms that there is a service outage in my area and that they are "working to restore service as soon as possible" whatever that means.

Okay, so I decide to wait a bit to see if service comes back. Maybe a good time to pull some of the videos that I have recorded on my Flip camcorder and start editing them together. I flip the USB connector out and try to connect it to my computer. Unfortunately, where I currently have it to access here in the living room is not exactly convenient for connecting the camera. So, I make the decision to get up and go across the room to the USB kit in my IBM bag. I get up, walk across the room with my walker, no problems. I lean down to reach the kit out of the bag, and find it is just out of reach. So, I lean a bit more, and then it happens. I take a header into the walker and collapse on the floor in a pile of Marcus.

First thing's first, I need to extricate myself from the walker. After about 15 minutes of struggling with that, I find myself lying on the floor trying to decide what to do next. Finally, I call for Emily, knowing that I am going to need some sort of help if I am going to get off the floor before morning. Between the two of us, we try to come up with a plan to get my butt off of the floor, but nothing seems quite right. My mom heard us struggling out in the living room and came out to see what the problem was. It was her idea to try and crawl over to my bed and get up that way. I made it over to the bed, and with their help I was able to hoist my upper body onto the bed. Unfortunately, I was still stuck, face down, half way on the bed. Remembering that the bed can be raised and lowered, I instructed Emily to raise the bed as high as it would go, and then after that to raise the foot of the bed higher. Between the two, I was able to get my feet under me and eventually sit at the side of the bed.

3:00 in the morning, and all three of us were wide awake. But I was up on the bed, nursing a few aches and pains from the ordeal. It was something that I had thought about, and knew that might happen at some point, but I had no idea it was going to be that hard to accomplish something as simple as getting off the floor.

Gravity: it's the law.

Time in the ICU

There are a number of things that I remember about my time in the ICU at Mercy Hospital. Since I was unable to roll myself over, the staff used a small (but powerful) sky lift that was attached to a track on the ceiling. They would lower the lift belt down and connect it to a harness that was placed below me in the bed. The belt was then raised, and the staff was able to change the dressings on the wounds that were on the back of my thigh. It was very scary at first, being lifted into the air, especially since I didn't have a lot of control over my body position. I felt like I was being left in mid-air. But the staff did an excellent job of making sure that nothing unfortunate happened.

Physical therapy has been, and continues to be, a large part of my recovery, and it started way back in the ICU. I remember it taking 6 people just to get me seated at the side of the bed. I was not able to hold myself upright without someone helping to prop me up. Doing leg lifts while seated was so difficult. You might as well have asked me to run the mile. There were attempts to find something that would allow me to sit upright while keeping undo weight off of the wounds on my legs. First was a special bed that was supposed to be able to go from lying down to almost upright automatically. Unfortunately, lying on it was something akin to trying to sleep on several boulders. After bringing my original bed back, they tried a chair that was able to recline into a nearly horizontal position. But, this was about as comfortable as sitting on a hay bail for a couple of hours. They then brought in a wheel chair that I was able to sit in. It was the most comfortable of the three options, although that really wasn't saying much. The nurses wanted me to sit in the chair for meals, which was extremely difficult. I was still having a hard time holding my head up, so combining that with attempts to eat with arms that were nearly as useless as those of a T-Rex made of a very frustrating meal. I sat in the chair eating my evening meal during the NFC championship game, and I literally do not remember any of it, I was so uncomfortable and miserable.

Not long after the traych had been put into my throat, the respiratory therapist wanted me to try and use something called a Pasimer valve. This small piece of plastic, when placed on the breathing tube, would allow me to talk. The first time that I used it, the whole process of talking seemed somewhat foreign. I sounded like a cartoon character, and phlegm from my throat would build up behind the valve and leave me in a fit of coughing. I later realized that if I removed the valve, I was able to clear my throat and stop the coughing fit. It was good to be able to do more than just point, jester, and mouth words, but it wasn't easy to get used to.

Pet Therapy

I want to take a brief break from my account of my hospital stay to expound on pet therapy.

While I was staying in the skilled nursing department, about twice a month, a volunteer would come around with a dog on a leash. The dog that was there most of the time was a large labradoodle, which is a cross between a labrador retriever and a poodle. This was a bit of an odd looking dog, but the sweetest animal. Petting him gave me a very calming feeling, and really put a smile on my face, which considering the situation, was quite an accomplishment.

Being in the skilled wing, I was able to have one of our cats come and visit me in the room. We chose Hershey because she is the most outgoing and the least skittish of our two cats. The first visit consisted of Hershey exploring the room and basically ignoring me. But at that time I hadn't seen her in almost three months, so just having her in the room was great. Subsequent visits went better, although she never got totally comfortable with the room.

After one of the visits, the nurse came in and took my blood pressure. It was about 20 points lower than it usually was! This occurred after a subsequent visit, and I had the same result. It was amazing the calming effect that Hershey had on me. Even now, as I continue to recover at home, our cats continue to create an aura of calm around the house... unless they are tearing around playing with each other. Then all you can do is make sure your feet stay clear of the trajectory!

Beginning Anew, Part 2

After the surgery, I was taken to the ICU to recover. I was out for a week, as my family and friends and the doctors all waited to see if I would respond to the antibiotics. Soon, my fever broke. After this I woke up, although I have no memories of the first week. I was basically just responding to different stimuli in the room. I was focusing in the direction of voices in the room. I seemed to respond when they turned the television on and Star Wars was playing.

When I finally became consciously aware of things, I remember being very confused. I didn't know where I was, or what time or date it was. I spent a lot of time drifting in and our of sleep. I remember thinking to myself at one point that I must be at the University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City for some reason. My brothers, their wives, and my nephew flew in soon after they learned that I was in the hospital. I do remember them coming in and saying goodbye. Of course, this entire time I've been intubated so I was unable to speak. So all I could do was smile, nod, and point.

It was about this time that I became fully aware of my surroundings. I saw a note that had been left for the staff that I liked the Disney Channel and the SciFi Channel on the television. I looked at the calendar across the room, and came to a startling realization. As far as I had know up to this point, I had been in the hospital for a couple of days. But, when I saw the days marked off on the calendar, I realized that I had been in the hospital for a week!

I also became aware of something that would completely change my view of the world. I was unable to move my legs, and my arms were nearly useless. And on top of that, I could not feel my feet. I don't remember really saying anything about it, but it definitely scared me.

A couple of days after I woke up, the decision was made to remove the breathing tube from my mouth and do a tracheotomy. This is basically a breathing tube in the throat that allows you to breath with the help of a ventilator, but also be able to do things like eating and drinking. This was my first surgery that I was aware of. I was apprehensive, but came through with flying colors.

Soon after I became aware of the world around me, I experienced my first bout with dialysis. During this whole ordeal, my kidneys had shut down, which meant there was nothing to remove the impurities from my blood. The doctors were also using the process to remove excess fluid from my body. In an attempt to bring my blood pressure up to a level that they could at least measure, they pumped my full of fluids. Apparently, I look unbelievably bloated after this process. Needless to say, there was a lot of excess fluid to remove.

During dialysis, your blood is cycled through a machine that basically performs the function of the kidneys. This process is very tiring, and can make you sick to your stomach, especially if they are also pulling massive amounts of fluids off of your body. There are a number of restrictions that go along with this process. They put you on a fluid restriction. You do not realize just how thirsty you can get until you can't have anything to drink. The nurses did a good job of regulating my liquids so that I didn't use everything up early in the day. But there was a lot of eating ice chips in the meantime.

There are also restrictions on the diet. I was not able to eat foods with a lot of potassium or phosphorus. This removed pretty much all dairy from my diet, and for someone who loves milk and cheese, this was a huge deal. So, I had to put non-dairy creamer on my cereal in the morning, and I was unable to have any milk to drink. No grilled cheese sandwiches, no cheese burgers, no pizza. If dialysis did not bring my kidneys back to life, I wasn't sure how I was going to survive with such a limited diet.

More later...

Beginning Anew

Well, here I am, back again. I keep coming back to this blog, wanting something to say, something to share with everyone. I've had many ideas in the past, but nothing seemed right. That was before 2010. This has been a year of change, a year of struggle, and a year of hope. Now, if you will indulge me, I want to share my experiences from the past half year. A year that started with a lovely Christmas celebration, and quickly degraded into a life-or-death struggle with an organism that I had no idea had taken up residence in my body.

January 10th was just like any other Sunday. We returned from celebrating Christmas with my family in Pennsylvania, and headed to bed, looking forward to a Monday off from work. Monday came, and I started to feel as though I had caught a touch of the flu. I remember having dinner with my wife that night. Because my stomach wasn't feeling well, I thought that a nice turkey sandwich from Panera would hit the spot.

Things are a bit fuzzy until bedtime, when I started to shiver uncontrollably. We piled the blankets on as I tried desperately to get warm, but nothing seemed to be working. It was then that I remembered we had a fan with a heating element in the bathroom, so I went into the bathroom and turned the heating fan on. I then asked Emily to get me some hot tea. As I sat getting warm, drinking hot tea and bottled water, it occurred to me that perhaps I was dehydrated, since the symptoms seemed to fit. So I continued to take in fluids like mad, something that, in retrospect, was probably a bad idea. I don't remember a lot after this.

I have vague memories of waking up the next morning, and telling Emily that I had called my boss at work to tell him that I wouldn't be in (although I hadn't). I don't remember the following events, but Emily and my parents have related bits and pieces to me. Apparently, the next few hours consisted of me traveling between the bathroom and the bedroom, all the while telling Emily that I was okay. Emily had since asked her parents (who live here in Dubuque) to come over because she was worried about how I was acting, telling my wife at one point, apparently, that I had a tumor. All I can think of when I hear this is Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Kindergarten Cop" telling the children "it's not a tumor!" As I slipped further into delirium, my father-in-law called my parents (who live about 90 minutes away) and asked them to come down. Soon after they arrived, I was to the point where I was talking incoherently. At that point, my father made the decision to call 911.

Apparently it was quite the scene outside of our house in our quiet little subdivision. For, when you make a 911 call, regardless of the emergency, you will receive the following emergency vehicles: a police cruiser, a fire rescue truck, and an ambulance. I'm a big guy, and I was bigger when this happened, so it took quite a few of the responders to get me on the gurney and out to the ambulance. I have what I can only imagine is a false memory of being dropped before reaching the ambulance. The next memory is being slid into the ambulance. I then have a brief memory of the ambulance garage at Mercy Hospital, as they took me out of the ambulance and rushed me to the emergency room. Jump to one of the examination rooms in the ER, and my memory of trying to get up off of the examination table, telling people that "I have to leave." Emily said that I was very out of it at this point, and not making a lot of sense at all.

At this point, my memories stop. The rest is from accounts from friends and family. I was taken to surgery so that they could determine why my body's systems were failing. The surgeon told my family that I had a 10 percent chance of surviving the surgery, but a 1 percent chance of surviving without the surgery. Quite possibly the hardest thing that my wife had to do at that time was to sign the consent form giving the doctors permission to perform surgery, a surgery that I may not return from. The staff then began to wheel me down to the operating room. As they pulled me into the waiting elevator, one of the wheels took a bad turn and became lodged between the elevator and the main floor. Unfortunately, all of the staff members helping were at that point in the elevator, behind the bed. My father-in-law, in a moment of fast thinking and super-human strength, lifted the bed by himself and got it into the elevator.

I came out of surgery with three deep wounds in my right leg, where the surgeon had removed skin in an attempt to determine what had happened. By this time, the only system in my body that hadn't shut down was my circulatory system, and as it was, my blood pressure was not high enough to register on the equipment. I had a fever somewhere over 105 F. And I was out cold. The doctors basically told my family that all we could do was wait at this point and hope that the fluids and antibiotics would do their job.

To be continued (of course)...

Movie Review: Evan Almighty

This originally appeared in the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald.

Genesis 6:14 – So make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.

When references to this Biblical verse start to creep into Evan Baxter’s life, he begins to think that there is something odd going on. When the wood and tools for an ark are delivered to his family’s new house, he knows there’s something up. The visit from God, well, that was the icing on the cake.

“Evan Almighty” is the sequel to Jim Carey’s 2003 comedy “Bruce Almighty”. Steve Carell reprises his role as newscaster Evan Baxter. In the first moments of the movie, we find out that Evan has been elected to the U.S. Congress. So, it’s off to Washington, D.C., for Evan, his wife (Gilmore Girl Lauren Graham), and three sons.

While it may be a bit clichéd for movies of this structure, we soon realize that Evan’s family life is not perfect. During his recent run for Congress, it appears as though Evan’s relationship with his sons and wife has taken a back-burner. But, this new move has come with the promise of more family time, starting with a family hike in the beautiful countryside of Prestige Crest, the brand new housing development that they’ve moved into. Unfortunately, career advancement rears its ugly head on Evan’s first day on the job, when he is asked to be junior sponsor on a bill that senior Congressman Long (John Goodman) wants to move through during this session.

If that wasn’t enough, Evan receives a visit from God (Morgan Freeman, reprising his role). Much to Evan’s surprise, God asks him to build an ark, for there is a flood coming. Of course, Evan finds this quite difficult to believe. But, over the course of the next couple of days, a number of things happen that will either drive Evan crazy, or convince him that God actually does want him to build an ark.

To be honest, the plot and execution of this script are mundane, at best. I can’t say that I was truly surprised by anything that happened. We’ve seen the family problems in a hundred other movies. And the idea of God coming down and talking to the common man? We’ve seen that, as well. So, why did I like this movie? Steve Carell is a huge part of that. His comedic timing, his physical comedy mixed with dry wit, it’s all just so irresistible. I truly enjoyed watching him on-screen. The cast of supporting actors is also to be commended. From Evan’s congressional staffers to John Goodman’s turn as a money-grubbing politician, they are all quite enjoyable.

This movie is the definition of a “feel good movie”. The movie brought a genuine smile to my face by the end, beyond the laughing that I was doing the rest of the time. Ignoring the knock across the head received from the environmental issues, it’s a movie about what is truly important in life, though most people won’t have to build an ark to find them.