Longanimity
The picture you are looking at is ten stitches in my forearm. I had a little surgery a week ago Friday. There was a “questionable” blemish on my forearm. After several minutes of cutting a divot in my arm and ten stitches, it was gone and sent to pathology.
We found out last week it is benign. They did not tell me what it was and frankly, I did not care after I heard the word “benign.” The word malignant would have set off several alarms for doctors suggesting I start an immune suppressant protocol. Those alarms would have shut down the transplant process for a couple of years. Not a pretty scenario.
This was one of the two remaining hurdles to September 7. The next test is the final cross match with the donor. It is the last test to make sure the donor and I are compatible. The results of the cross match return September 6.
Next week is full of appointments to prepare for September 7. After so many starts and stops, it is hard to believe this may actually come to pass.
The Subpoena
I was subpoenaed yesterday. It was not for a jury, but to be a witness. I was in a multi car wreck last April. I was at the intersection of El Dorado and Highway 3 waiting in the turn lane to turn south on Highway 3 when a convertible (top down) sports car came flying over the median on El Dorado and impaled itself in the side of my van.
Fortunately, the speeding schlemiel driving the sports car was wearing his seatbelt. If he had not been wearing his seatbelt, he would have been propelled like a javelin through the back windows of my van. And fortunately, he hit right behind the driver side door. If his trajectory had been one more degree west, I don’t think I’d be concerned about kidney problems anymore. I don’t think I’d have a care in the world, or at least this world.
The impact of his hit sent me to several physical therapy appointments and pushed my van into the next lane causing me to hit another car. All told, this was a four car collision and sporty got the ticket. (The funny part about the ticketing experience was the officer dispatched to the scene. The officer was a woman, nothing against women. She took everyone’s license and was trying to get stories and a crowd was beginning to gather. She was rather nervous, short tempered was having trouble getting the story and kept calling for back up. When some backup showed up, she announced she had to leave to go to the BATHROOM. So, she hopped in her squad car, sped out of the parking lot WITH our licenses leaving this other officer to figure out what to do with a parking lot with four wrecked cars, the usual horde of wrecker vultures, and a growing crowd. Only I have these types of experiences.)
The collision totaled our van. We were very sad to know our van had been totaled. In the previous week we made a decision to do extensive repairs and to keep the van rather than start another car payment. Besides, it was a great van – even if it was over a decade old. It had years of NASA All-Star stickers, it could haul all the baseball and other sports equipment which is a necessary part of our suburban life, it had a fairly new CLIS “honor student” sticker, it was the van in which we brought the dog home when we first got her, it was a great van for our vagabond traveling since we don’t really know how to pack “light.” When the van was taken from us, we did not know for sure if it would be totaled or not, so we never really got to say goodbye.
We had a rental from speedy’s insurance company for the deliberation period and as that took a while, it was looking like Donor #1 was going to make. The transplant team told me once I have a transplant I cannot drive for three months. (I think they are cautious.) That was when my dad stepped in and offered me his truck. The offer was for a couple weeks back in May since the surgery was going to be in early June. Recovery was going to be the summer and then by the fall I could drive again and we would have had time to make a decision on what to do.
As the testing of donors has strung out, the couple of weeks have become a couple of months. Other than the gas costs, I really like his truck. It has personality from the years of driving to IAH and the accidents – emphasis on the dents. The boys like it because it has the smell of Old Spice and it reminds them of their Papa.
Back to the subpoena. I have been ordered to appear on September 6 at the courthouse on Lubbock downtown. I don’t know why I have been summoned. I would really like to appear and get this whole wreck thing behind me. But I called the courthouse today to let them know I will not be able to make it on September 6.
I found out I have another “subpoena” of sorts for my attention. If all goes as planned, September 6 will be my last day to do dialysis. Word is back on Donor #9. He has passed all the tests and we have set a transplant date for September 7. That is a writ I’d rather honor. I am cautiously optimistic as I have been here before and there are two other tests to pass, but it is close. Hopefully by Christmas, a gently used kidney will be fully functional and I can get back in the drivers’ seat.
Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?
It was an interesting day in the clinic. I was in the middle bay and there was a major rustling behind me. You cannot really see behind you when you are tethered to the machine, but from the periphery I could sense some action behind me.
Once the initial commotion calmed a bit, EMS workers bolted through the front door and rushed in. There were some radio blurts and then a stretcher appeared and one of the patients was whisked away. Speculation on the floor was one of the comrades had a stroke.
The stroke event led to reminiscences of when other medical emergencies happened on the ward. There was a tale of how someone had a heart attack. The person telling the story witnessed the staff going into action and said the staff was most impressive at that time. This led to one of the nurses relating a story of another clinic when a patient did something to their needle at the access point and bled to death in four minutes. These stories make you feel warm all over.
Things settled down after the EMS folks departed until the storm came. There are huge windows on one wall of the clinic. We watched a weather transformation this afternoon. The sky went from bright and sunny to dark and gray. Then the sky turned black and the rain started. The rain came down in impressive sheets and filled the street, but the lightening was more spectacular.
It was spectacular until the lights went out. I don’t mind the lights going out, except it usually means the electricity is off. I don’t mind electricity going off except when about a pint or two of my blood is outside my body dependent upon a machine to pump it back in. Yep. The machines stopped. The staff has trained us to manually pump our blood back in our bodies. However, when they trained us, the machines were within reach and the lights were on and you could see what you were doing.
This afternoon you could not see a thing when the lights went out and the tubes and blood pressure cuffs curtailed the ability to reach. I would have been in big trouble if it had been up to me alone. (But, I’m trained.) Fortunately, there were only four of us left in the clinic hooked up to the machines. I have never seen nurses bolt from behind a desk, but we have some quick ones when they have to be! The electricity was off for a little while and once the machines recycled and the staff punched the right sequence on the front panel the blood was flowing again. With all the heparin injected in you I don’t think the blood would have clotted (I mean if I get a paper cut, I get concerned because it just keeps flowing. Not to mention when I nick myself shaving.), but having a machine stop pumping was a first.
I started thinking after the pump got going again. At home when there is lightening and thunder, I usually turn off my computer and other electrical devices. I wondered if it was a wise idea to be attached to a machine during an electrical storm. I was about to voice that question to the charge nurse when all of a sudden we had a repeat. There was a huge clap of thunder, a brilliant blast of light and the electricity went off again.
I guess I am telepathic. This time the charge nurse shouted to the techs to remove every one from the machines and call it a day. I did not get my full time on the machine, but given the weather and the possibilities of the electrical chair, I’m not going to complain.
Twenty Years Ago
Twenty years ago today, I was in Hiroshima at a peace gathering. It was the 40th Anniversary of the bombing. I was traveling the rails of the Shinkansen (Japanese bullet train) roaming around Japan the summer of 1985.
I made it to the Peace Park and tried to find a place to stand. After living in Asia, I was accustomed to massive crowds, but this one was packed. I recall it was a rainy, drizzly day. There was a bell tolling. I did not understand a word the speakers spoke. There was a heavy mood. The gray sky and the bell’s toll carried the mood.
I found a spot near the Peace Fountain. A huge display of origami cranes had been created by children from across Japan and placed between the Peace Fountain and the Children’s Monument. It was the vow for peace. Paper lanterns were around the park and in the water to commemorate the loss of life.
In the park were museums with pictures and artifacts. It was incredible to see the devastation. When the bomb hit, there was vaporization. The Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall (or the A-Bomb Dome) was the eerie skeleton in the park.
In one of the exhibits I saw a picture from the hills above Hiroshima after the blast. It was as if the city was in a basin that was crushed.
After spending the day in the park, I took a ferry out to Miyajima and maneuvered my way up a hill. Somehow, I got to the spot where the picture of devastation had been taken forty years earlier and was able to look out over the city. The only obvious remnant of the peril to the city was the park. The city had built back and was prospering again.
Somewhere I have a journal from that trip. I remember thinking about war. I had not experienced war. I was a young child during Vietnam. My cousins enlisted in the armed services during times of peace. They told stories of serving our country more as a travel brochure than protection against aggression.
After spending the day viewing the exhibits of total destruction, I felt responsible for the destruction. I also remember trying to balance that emotion with my “kibun” for my Korean friends who spoke about the atrocities of the Japanese when Japan occupied Korea. I also thought it was interesting there was no mention of Pearl Harbor.
Many Post-Modern philosophers point to this day in 1945 as the end of the Enlightenment. All of our efforts at enlightenment culminated in one major form of brilliance over a city and at the end of the morning all that knowledge consummated a chthonic chaos and absolute destruction.
I remember thinking wars of destruction were done and future battles would be economic. The Walkman was beginning to be very popular. I remember thinking that Japan was making another global invasion with the power of Sony.
It is amazing what twenty more years has brought about. I remember reading Frances Fukuyama in the early 1990s and his statement about the End of History. He was reflecting on Hegel that the evolution of human society would culminate when mankind achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and fundamental longings. I could buy into that idea. Maybe we had learned some lessons and development and progress would bring the end of conflict. Little did we know what the longings of fundamentalists would bring to the globe within a decade.
Thinking today, I find it amazing that I can say twenty years ago and it has me wondering about twenty years from now.
Not much...
Not much time to write this week and not much to write because not much has happened this week. Still waiting on results from Donor #9.
I am still spared the 4.5-hour routine. Why? I don’t know. I asked the nurses and they don’t have an answer from the doctors. Blood work was done last treatment, so that may tell the tale.
This week has been puke week. Three of the four people across from me were very sick on Tuesday and then two of the four were sick on Thursday. I am a sympathetic puker. If someone is wrenching his or her guts out in my presence, it draws me into the same behavior. I had trouble with the boys when they were sick. They would be sick and then I would be right behind them. Fortunately, I did not succumb this past week.
Sometimes people become ill because the blood pressure drops too far. Since these folks were sick late in their treatment, it was most likely the bp issue. There were several from the early treatment schedule still in their chairs waiting to walk. If the bp drops too far, they don’t let you leave. Besides, you cannot get too far. One morning I arrived to find someone fainted outside. I got one of the techs to help me bring him back in.
There is a new tech finishing his training this week and he is learning. I watched him stick my young friend. The first stick was painful and the second stick was torturous. I have never seen my friend pull out of the chair before, but apparently the needle went through some scar tissue that required some “encouragement” before it would puncture the skin. Instead of the usual two sticks, he got three on Thursday.
This tech was working my bay and he is learning you have to watch the patients. I think that is how so many became ill. He is learning for what to watch on the patients. In my chair, I am teaching him to read the orders. He pulled too much fluid off me and I was cramping. When I questioned why I was cramping and reviewed the treatment for the day, he had set me to pull too much. He thought my treatment was like the other patients’ rather than knowing I pull easy and should be set different from the usual protocols. It is tough for others to learn at my and my friends’ expense. He offered to cannulate my veins rather than prepare the catheter. That was a lesson I was not willing to take.
