Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Posted @ 10:41:40

I made it! Well sorta… I have completed the surgery and have come home. They wouldn’t let any electronic devices into the recovery area that had wireless antennas on it without a hard-switch. So I was stuck in the hospital for a few days with bad T.V. and only my PSP. Not so bad – I chalked another Final Fantasy out while I was there (FFI, PSP extended version).

The surgery itself was more about anticipation and pain management then anything else. The worst part was definitely sitting in the pre-op room waiting for more than an hour and a half to go in. Everything else was pretty nice though as they put me to sleep right outside the O.R. – it was quite literally like a cut in a movie, one second I was sitting there talking to the anesthesiologist, and the next, I was talking to my C.I.C.U. (critical intensive care unit) nurse. I won’t go into all the gory detail, but here is what they had connected to me (and why I was on so many good drugs):

• Catheter
• I.V. mainline in left hand
• I.V. Arterial line right wrist
• I.V. Arterial line in right jugular
• Chest tube (in right above my belly button, all the way up to top of incision)
• Lead wires (wires directly connected to my heart for temporary pacemaker)

 Thursday, October 23, 2008

Posted @ 03:23:33

I’ve been mulling over what to write here for a few days – what I could delv into and what to say as to what could possibly be my final words.

Indeed the past few weeks have been a deep introspective of everything I have come to know – my beliefs, my life and my friends and family. I have thought over all of the amazing times I’ve had, and what would happen if somehow I weren’t there anymore. Originally I kept thinking about all the what-if moments, thinking that it was best to plan for the worst, and subsequently ignoring all of the other absolutely great moments that I’ve been able to have and have shared.

It was in the bathroom one morning when it hit me that I will do my very best to come back with no scratches on me, like I’ve done so many times before. I shouldn’t be planning for the worst, but instead, remembering the best and expecting even better for the future. I have had an amazing run, doing so many things that others’ just hear about; my crazy whacky adventures that somehow I have always found myself to be in, and yes, even those really shitty times where somehow I’ve found a way to inject just a little humor to make things easier.

One of my favorite stories is “To Kill A Mockingbird”, and if you see my IM away message at all, you will know that I often quote that when I run into difficult times. For those of you who don’t know what quote I am talking about, it is “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. / It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway; and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” Many times have I run into impossible situations and come out on top, this is the first time where not coming out on top means that you die. It’s hard to explain until you’ve had to make that choice for yourself; and sure it’s easy to make now, but then again, you don’t have the ultimate consequence looming over your head if you fail.

For whatever reason, I’ve have decided to head this straight on, and I don’t intend on letting anyone get me down. This isn’t about me going to a hospital and having a surgery done; it’s about me getting treatment that I must have to make my life whole again. It isn’t a bad thing, it isn’t a good thing, it’s not what I want to do, but I know is must be done. I just find it very ironic, and very laughable that the things I have been deathly afraid of since I can remember: needles, and open-heart surgery, I am facing now – it’s my mockingbird and can only make me stronger; and I will be laughing all the way because of the irony of it all.

I’ll leave you with another one of my favorite quotes, this one from Lewis Black’s Nothing’s Sacred, simply because it so closely explains all of my friends throughout my life:

“I do have my friends, and they have been more then kind. Generous to a fault, they have served me in good stead, and have put up with me for reasons I cannot comprehend. They have provided me with shelter from the many storms I have mentioned and as awful as it all may seem, they are the reason I believe that all will be well. But if not, we can at least laugh about it.

My friends are, and have been my extended family through the years and though the faces may have changed over time, they are all immutably part of my DNA. Many Americans believe that there is only one type of family unit and that is based entirely on blood and heterosexually. Well, like it or not, the rules have changed. The people who cling to rhetoric about family values are the folks who cannot live without hardbound rules. They worship it at times more than god. They take great joy in embracing their inaccurisms as much as I do my anarchism. That anarchism isn't meant to be a threat to their lives, its just the way that I have responded to the faiths and to my fears. I have been blessed with great friends, and they are the indisputable good fortune of my life. They are the ones that have kept the door open to my sanity; For They are the ones that say, "Lewis, stop it now, that's crazy".

I have tried to give you the dots that somehow connected until I became who I have become. Keep your eyes open, and don't be afraid of the darkness. You are not crazy, they are. Who are they? It's tough to say; it may change from day to day but there is a they, and they are so powerful, that they don't really give a shit what we think anymore.”

I’ve had a great life, and there is not one moment that I regret having or doing. I am on my 6th top ten list of things to do before I go and quite frankly, I was running out of ideas :) With that I say peace, love and happiness; I’ll see you on the flipside. If I don’t, I’ll save you a spot, and in the meantime talk to Leonardo, Einstein, J.F.K. and Kurt about what the hell just happened.

- bob

 Monday, April 21, 2008

Posted @ 23:04:07

I’ve been crazy busy this past month or so visiting doctors and the like; so I will get right down to it.

I saw my cardiac surgeon this past week and found out that I will need to have open-heart surgery to fix the problem with my heart. The Cardiac Angiogram found that I have a right to left shunt my in heart, which means that oxygenated blood (and vice versa) flows incorrectly through my heart. The doctor said that this explains why I had an infracted kidney, and the stroke/seizure. The operation is set for October 23rd, 2008; and I will be in the hospital for about 5 days. After that I will be home-bound for 6 weeks, not being able to pick up anything that weighs more than a phonebook (as it could re-split my ribcage – they have to split it in half to do the surgery). I’ve already started buying lots of books that I wanted to read, as well as prep my place so it is more me-friendly. My mom will be coming out for 2 to 3 weeks to take care of me initially; after that I think I am going to have to ask friends to take care of me until I am fully healed (after three weeks I should be pretty much self-sustaining by then, just a need for people to lift things heavier than a phone book.

In other news, my right eye started to show some weakness; which is more than likely a side-effect of the stroke. I went to the doctor, and they found that I had a slight astigmatism in my right eye, as well as a weaker eye. I got everything taken care of, but now I need to have reading glasses for the computer, books, and pretty much anything that requires reading text (though I am still O.K. to drive without glasses).

This brings me to the fuckery that is the California DMV. It started last week with a call on Saturday from the DMV saying that they had to see me, and had made an appointment with me at 9:00 AM on Monday morning. Knowing the DMV out here (or anywhere) – that’s bad news. I showed up to my appointment and asked them what this was all about. Apparently, even though my doctor had already cleared me, I was still in the system and ‘had to take a full re-examination’ to be able to continue to drive. This includes another written drivers’ exam, another full road test (which I haven’t done in 10 years – literally); oh, and lets not forget, the ‘special’ tests for those who had strokes. This includes being able to follow directions to a given location, then taking the exact same path back to the starting point without instruction help. They also test that you can drive perfectly while carrying on a full conversation with the instructor. Now that’s just fucking retarded. Did I mention they already scheduled this test for April 29th, 2008 and told me that I had to show up or I lose my license? God, I hate bureaucracy sometimes.

On a lighter note, I finally completed my exhibit export script that I’ve been working on the past few weeks. This basically takes your iPhoto contents, and parses it into a SQL database, with optional image upload. The beauty in this system is that everything is pluggable – you can write an interface for Postgres SQL if you want, or if you don’t like rsync over SSH, you can write your own FTP module for instance. It’s a great program, and is what put all of the images on my site (check the exhibit link in the upper left). I am going to be putting this through a final test sometime soon, uploading almost 16,000 pictures, with comments, ratings, etc. When it passes the processing of all of these images, I will release it to the public. Since it’s been able to handle around 4,000 images already, I don’t feel like it will be a problem. A side note - if you do find any pictures that are posted that you do not want shown (i.e. they include you in it), please let me know. I didn't check all my pictures when I imported them, and already had a case where pictures were shown that were not supposed to be.

On another drug side-note, I am now taking liquid codeine and prescription strength Claritin for the Death Flu that I caught from my roommate. Actually, it isn’t a Death Flu, it’s really bad allergies that get infected and turn into the flu. Seeing as how many other problems I have right now (including elevated liver enzymes) she saw fit to 1-2 punch this thing out of my system. I also started on coumadin this week. That brings my morning drug intake at 3 pills, 1 liquid, and 1 injection; and 2 pills, 1 liquid, and 1 injection at night. Wowsers. I need one of them pillboxes.

One last thing – my mini is on a ship to the U.S. right now!! I can’t wait to drive it!!

I will probably be updating this page as soon as I know the result from my upcoming MRI, Ultrasound, or drive tests. Till then - enjoy it!

 Saturday, March 1, 2008

Posted @ 03:18:34

How stuff changes in a week. It’s been a long few weeks, so I’ll get right to it. I had a bad headache due to caffeine withdrawal for most of the first part of the week I was back in Mountain View. I had a scheduled doctor’s appointment on Friday (the 15th) at 10:30A.M. I took the first part of the day off and drove to my doctor’s office; I parked the car and walked in. I walked up to the secretary and said that I was there for my 10 o’clock appointment. At that point I remember doing a slight half turn and everything going black. I remember slightly waking up and seeing a female doctor to my right, and hearing paramedics to my left, but not seeing them. I was strapped down to the board at that point and had an oxygen mask on.

When I got to the hospital, I was informed that I had a seizure; and immediately went into testing to see what was going on. I had more tests then I can remember; though I do remember multiple CT scans, MRI’s and other crap. While I was in the E.R., my boss and one of the other leads stopped in to see how I was doing. They were contacted for emergency contact information when I was doctor’s office / ambulance.

I was in the hospital for the next few days, and a lot of people (too many to mention) stopped by to see me in the hospital. They really kept my spirits up while I was there. After the second day of being admitted, I was good enough to walk around, and found out that I was in the stroke section of the hospital. It turns out that a Venus sinus thrombosis clot caused a stroke and triggered my seizure. Other injuries included some nasty gouges in my hand from when I seized, as I think I hit the countertop when I fell. They also believe that I’ve had a defect in my heart all of my life (a right to left shunt) which is very common in people; however, they believe that this combined with my blood caused clots to form and pass on down to my kidneys and my brain.

For now, I’m currently taking Keppra (for at least a year), an anti seizure medication as well as Lovenox, a blood thinner that I have to inject into my stomach; both twice a day. I’m seeing a neurologist, a hematologist, a cardiologist as well as a few other doctor’s that I don’t seem to remember that well right now. As it stands, they are doing follow up tests. The biggest test is going to be on Tuesday, where I’m going to have a Cardiac Angiogram, by which they will measure pressures in my heart and determine if there is actually a defect in my heart. If they do determine that there is a problem with my heart, I will most likely have to have open-heart surgery to get the problem fixed. I’ll keep this site updated with more information as I find out more about what is going on.

 Monday, February 4, 2008

Posted @ 14:01:56

So I’m posting this so everyone knows what happened to me over the past few weeks, since telling everyone over and over is long and repetitive... and I honestly wouldn’t remember if I told you or not at this point. Here goes...

I was back in NY for a week to goto Josh Gross’s funeral; he was one of the pilots killed in the helicopter accident down in Texas. He was really close to my family as a whole – it was a pretty shitty week. During the last night that most of the friends of Josh were in town, we decided to do his bar run one last time before we left. We left and had fun, ending the night with red bull and Vodka’s (Josh’s favorite drink) around 4A.M. We got everyone in the car and had our DD start taking us home.

On the way to drop others off, I started having severe pains in my abdomen; I had the driver pull over, thinking that I might have had some bad food. They dropped off another one of our party and came back and picked us up (one stayed behind to watch me). I got dropped off at home a few minutes later and I went to bed, still in major pains. My older brother got home shortly afterwards, and checked in on me, and decided to call my mom at the ER and ask her what was going on. She said that I needed to go to the ER. We got in our car and left.

We got to the ER around 4:30A.M., and the pain got worse. They put me in a room, hooked up an IV and gave me some painkillers. They ran tests, including CT scans of my abdomen, but could not find anything conclusive. They suggested that I might have a bad case of food poisoning, as nothing else was showing up in their scans. The doctors wrote me a prescription for some Vikoden and said that if the pain changes at all for any reason, to come straight back. I was released for the first time at 9A.M.

I got my drugs, and went home. The pain killers that the hospital had given me had subsided and the pain in my stomach became much worse. I took one of the pills and figured that I just needed to get the Vikoden into my system and everything would be ok. I laid down. About an hour later, I woke up; felt horrid, and stumbled down for the bathroom. I almost made it there, and burst – puking black liquids all over the hallway and the bathroom. At that point the pain was so bad that all I could do was lay in the living room curled up in the fetal position. My mom rushed me back to the ER again around 11A.M.; and I went straight into one of the rooms – no waiting in the waiting room.

I got there and the pain got worse. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. When they asked me scale it from 1 to 10; I said 11. I couldn’t stay still... moving was the only thing that seemed to keep the pain somewhat at bay. Again they popped an IV in me; and started to give me morphine for the pain. Morphine is some pretty strong shit I tell you – it took most of the pain away, but some of it was still there. During the next 3 or 4 days, they ran tests on pretty much every organ in my body, including multiple CT scans, a radioactive test (they inject you with a radioactive isotope and scan the flow of stuff in your system), ultrasounds, and other stuff that I can’t remember. I was on morphine pretty much the entire time.

After all of this, they determined that I has a infarct Or papillary narcosis in my kidney, and that my left kidney had been basically destroyed. They’ve never seen anything like this in someone so young before; and suggested that it was probably due to high stress levels from work, what was going on with Josh, dehydration, and lack of food for a week (during the week I was home for Josh, I barely ate or drank at all). They also suggested that another cause might have been the ibuprofen or the Excedrin I was taking for headaches at the time, though it was outside the range of time needed for alcohol interactions – both drugs can damage the kidneys.

As that is that. They cleared me to fly back, with this list of stuff to do:
- Contact PCP provider and get appointments
- Two surgery’s – one to remove my dead kidney (I think), and one for something else
- Lowfat diet
- Less stress at work, in general
- No drinking

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