He's Home...

This year can't get over with fast enough...

Hi everyone. I know it's been forever since I posted and I can't promise I'll blog again in the recent future.

This year hasn't been all great for my hubby and I. It seemed to start out good when he had the gastric by-pass surgery. He came through it with flying colors, no complications... Shortly after the surgery, when he was home, he started having what we could only explain as anxiety attacks. We didn't really think that's what they actually were, but it was the closest we could come to describing them. A little short of a month after the surgery, after he was all done with the pain meds... he noticed he was having a lot of back pain, between the shoulder blades. He saw the doctor and had an Xray done. They said that he had some vertebra between the shoulder blades that were twisted a bit. The doctor said that this type of abnormality in the spine was usually seen in an impact injury. He hadn't HAD any accidents.

Back in 2003, when I had my surgery, I remember that before I was put to sleep, the OR staff had me sit up and put a stack of towels under my back so that when I laid down, my head would be hanging back, in order to put the endotracheal tube down my throat. I remember when they did this, it hurt like hell! I was actually thinking about it and was worried that my spine would break, it hurt so bad, but then I was out and don't remember anything else.

When Rick had his surgery, they didn't do that to him before he was asleep, so we assume that they did it after he was put under anesthesia. Of course, we will never be able to prove anything, but we believe that they dropped him on that stack of towels. I'm sure they probably used the towels, though we have no proof of it. I think that Rick will eventually get his records from the hospital and search through them to see if there's anything that indicates anything that might have happened during the surgery or just before it.

We aren't ones to usually complain. However, this back pain has become increasingly worse to the point where he's on oxycoedone all the time and it STILL isn't good enough. He's in horrible pain all the time. Depression has become a larger problem because of it, too, and to be honest, we are both worried that this back pain will eventually debilitate him. It’s a good thing that he’s lost over a hundred pounds. He still needs to lose about 50ish, yet.

About a month after the surgery, I believe it was in March, Rick had a stroke. It was what the doctor called an “ischemic” stroke. Meaning it “just happened”. There wasn’t like a clot or a bit of plaque that caused it. It was just one of those things that happened. Fortunately, he had only a minimal short term memory loss, no neurological weakness.

But now we have new worries on top of all that. On Friday (Dec 21) Rick woke me up about 9:30 am. He was feeling panicked and said his head was hurting a lot. He was telling me that he didn’t know what was wrong, why he couldn’t make it better and he was having trouble saying sentences correctly. We drove to the ER right away and spent all day there. Nothing showed up in the CT scan of his head, but he was in excruciating pain and had aphasia and confusion. He was unable to remember how to open the car door and had a little bit of trouble following orders like putting his hands out a certain way, etc. I was pretty sure he was having a stroke but they didn’t see one on the CT. They were also considering a migraine (which he used to have but hadn’t for about 5 years) or meningitis. They did a lumbar puncture (spinal tap)… actually made several attempts at it before they took him to Radiology to have it done with a fluoroscope. That was inconclusive, too… no meaningful blood in the CSF (cerebral spinal fluid).

They went ahead and admitted him to the hospital and sometime during the middle of the night, they took him for an MRI and MRA. At that point, they found that he’d had 2 strokes caused by some type of embolus - either a blood clot or a bit of plaque that might have broken off somewhere. The stroke he’d had back in March was in the right temporal lobe of the brain. These 2 new ones were on the left parietal lobe. He will be in the hospital through Christmas.

The pain in his head seems to be easing up. He is still on morphine every three hours, but at least he’s not on a morphine drip that keeps him knocked out. He isn’t having any neuromusculature weakness or paralysis. His face isn’t drooping, he can walk and talk, but he does have a bit of aphasia. He KNOWS the right words and what he wants to say, but sometimes it doesn’t come out right from his mouth. However, just in the last two days it’s gotten better, so I have hope that he will make a full recovery. At this point, though, we don’t know how long he will be off work or if he will even be allowed back at his job, since he deals with patient lab tests and quite often patient lives depend on those tests being right.

I do know that we are very lucky it wasn’t worse. It could have been MUCH worse.

All in all, I’ll be glad when 2007 is over, but only if 2008 is better. ;-/ Don’t get me wrong… I know we’re lucky and it could have been a lot worse. But I think my hubby deserves a break.

We made it to Roanoke this past weekend and visited with both my dad and sister.  My dad seems to be doing good, despite how bad he looks.  I'm not sure what is "good" and what is "bad" for his condition, but he is able to get up and walk and do things.  We would pick him up in the morning from the rehab center and keep him at the house until he was ready to go back.  The only rule was that he needed to be back by midnight.  The first night he was back at 10pm but after that he was ready and worn out by 7pm.  He was given a stuffed bear by the hospital called Sir-Coffs-A-Lot to hold over his chest when he needed to cough.  He said that he was really glad to have that and didn't go anywhere without it.  Because the sternum (breast bone) is sawed down the middle, whenever he coughed, it felt as if it were tearing any of the new healing that was happening... When he holds the bear (which looks soft and cuddly but is actually pretty substantial) to his chest as he coughs, it somehow keeps that tearing down and makes it not hurt so much.

It was great to see my sister again, too.   And she had a surprise for us.  She got herself a little kitten that she's named SweetiePie.  She said she was going to have me help her decide on a name, but then realized she was calling the little one SweetiePie all the time and probably would continue to do so, so she just named her that.  Makes sense to me!  LOL  You can click on the pictures below to get a larger version.

It looks like she's got a light brown leaf on the top of her head!  LOL, my sister was wearing Rick's "Big Dog" shirt and it looks like the dog is licking SweetiePie's belly!  hehehe  The poor baby wasn't feeling well and had lost a lot of weight this weekend so she was getting medicine and sleeping a lot.  The last day we were there, though, she was feeling better and frisky.  Oh my, Rick and I fell in LOVE with her! 

I called in sick today.  My first time at this job.  I just couldn't go in.  Couldn't sleep last night and had a lot of joint pain and couldn't find any Advil to take.   I'm resting today and hopefully feel much better tomorrow.  I'm having too much fun in the Second Life.  I'm a stripper and make decent money there.  hehe  Rick is on there too.  He has 4 characters but really only plays with one of them.  It's a girl!  LOL... we are a lesbian couple on Second Life!  LOL  We own a house and he's gotten a job dancing at the same club as me.... as the girl.  SL is down for maintenance right now but I want to get photos of our characters and I'll put them on here, if I can.  I'm going to have professional photos taken of my character (yes...there are people (avatars) on there that have photography shops... so I can have a professional looking profile...  It looks better for the dancers to have nice profiles.   

I'm so crazy....

UPDATE:

Unfortunately, Rick and I were unable to go to Roanoke.  Rick became sick and I got the sniffles so I wouldn't have been allowed to see my dad and Rick would have ended up getting sicker.

That's the bad news... The GOOD news is that my dad came through the surgery wonderfully and is doing well.  He only had one artery that needed the bypass graft and they didn't even put him on the heart pump so the surgery was only about an hour and a half.  The second day was rough for him because he had a lot of hiccups and nausea, which gave him the dry heaves...That hurt him a lot.  

The nausea is gone now and he's been able to get up and sit in a chair and walk the hall.  Today they moved him out of the surgical ICU to the stepdown unit where he can have a phone in the room.  I called and spoke to his nurse and she was packing him up to go to the other room.  Later, after work, I called and spoke to him.  He sounded really great, although, by the end of the conversation he was starting to sound a little tired.  He said that he thought that tomorrow he'd be finding out when he would be going onto the next step of this event... rehab. 

Next weekend, Rick and I will join my sister to visit with him in Roanoke.  He's always been a really active man and strong, even if he's little (was only 5'4" as an adult, but I think he might be shorter now) and I think that this is part of why he's doing so well.  Hopefully, that means he will heal fast and be able to be more active than he's been able to in the last couple of years.

Thank you all for caring and for sending the positive energies.    Love you for it! 

Prodigal Daughter...

... or Confessions of an Addictive Personality...

Yep, I don't come here much anymore.  I check in sometimes but just haven't had a lot that I could think to write, although plenty has happened.  The first month, or so, of me working in the hospital, I was so exhausted and sometimes dejected, that I just couldn't bring myself to write.  I would come home, change clothes and sit in front of the TV till it was time to go to bed.  Things have gotten better at work.  I've learned things I was afraid I wouldn't learn.  I feel more stable there.  I'm not sure I'll stay in the same position once I reach 6 months because I'm not happy working with the person I have to work with.  So after the 6 months are up, I'll consider looking for something else, but still in the hospital.

Rick and I have found a new outlet for entertainment.  It's called Second Life  and I've been obsessed with it.  It's everything I'd always wished Prodigy or AOL had been.  I'm bad, yes.  I've even stopped watching the soaps I've been watching for years.  Those who knew me before I came to the East Coast, know how I am...  At least I can be on it WITH my husband and he's not left out.

The biggest news is that tomorrow morning, my dad will be having a coronary artery bypass graft.  He only needs one artery done, which is good, I guess.  I don't really know if it matters if you have1 or 5.... 5 just sounds worse.  He had a heart cath on Monday, fully expecting the pain/discomfort he was having to prove to be a gastric problem, but it wasn't.  He's got an artery that is 95% blocked.  He was just extremely lucky he didn't have a major MI before this.  He said that the pain episodes were growing in frequency and intensity. 

Rick and I have to work in the morning but we will leave Chesapeake after 3pm and get to Roanoke about 9pm.  We probably won't get to see Daddy till Saturday because he'll be in recovery and I figure the visiting hours will be over by 8:30.  We'll see him on Saturday but I expect he'll still be pretty out from the anesthesia.  We'll need to clean out his fridge and turn down his heater and water heater....  I'm not sure what else will need to be done.  He'll be in rehab for a week, then has to go to an assisted living facility for 3 weeks because he can't be left alone during that time.  I considered leaving my job and moving there for the month while Rick stays here and works, but I decided that Rick and I really can't afford to do that.  We'd probably lose our apartment if I did that.

My dad is 83 years old and in pretty good condition.  All my life, the most he's ever had wrong with him is a cold or flu and arthritis.  He did cut off the end of his thumb once but I don't think that counts toward his health... ::sigh::

It's something that I'm going to have to face...  I'm working on it.  Please keep him in your thoughts... send some white light?  Thanks for reading and caring...