In Any Given Second (When Health Care Betrays You)

I knew we could be in big trouble just a few days ago when my wife shrieked in pain as she lifted something. Her thumbs were swallow up like the giant rubber gag ones I had as a kid. Her problem was arthritis. Her thumbs were red and sore.

It was a terrifying realization.

Why so?

I have arthritis as well, had it for years. My hands have become distorted from its ravages. The index finger on my right hand is frozen into a permanent point, except the tip turns down The bottle finger on my left refuses to march in line with the other fingers and I no longer can make a fist with either hand.

As a result I have great difficulty opening jars, writing, using tools and I am constantly dropping things. My hands gradually get worse each day, although medication I take has slowed the progress of the disease and taken away most of the pain.



Because the Rheumatologist helped me so much, I sent my wife to see him expecting the same results.But he couldn't help, other than offer some external salve and send her for X-rays. He did not want to give her further medication because she is on so much all ready. I deeply respect this doctor for this. He cares.

It occurred to me how difficult life could become if we both lost the use of our hands or at least found ourselves highly restricted by frozen joints and extreme pain. This sudden realization of our fragility was further drilled into my mind by recent health issues. My mind flashed back to the evening in August when I could not raise myself up from my bed. I could not do what we could call a sit up. I couldn't get into a sitting position to get off the bed and stand. Instead I rolled onto the floor where I was stuck face down and unable to do a push up. It was the most helpless feeling. We will come back to what caused it later.

I turned 75 this past June. My age didn't bother me. I had all ready planned to outlive my father, who died at age 94; in fact, I began to think in terms of 100. It was May, I was still 74 and feeling fit. Oh, I knew I wasn't as physically strong as in my youth or middle years, for that matter. I struggled unloading 40 pound bags of cat litter and carrying them up or down our steps, but I could still do that. Besides, I was beginning to regain muscle strength through my workouts. I did exercises at home and three times a week I went to the Senior Center Gym and worked out on the equipment. I also walked five miles or more every morning. I had been doing this for years.

It was on one of these morning walks that the "thing" happened in a blink of an eye or tick of the

clock or whatever cliche you wish to use for sudden and fast. I had gone about a third of my route and was walking down the path around the big meadow to the front of the park, when my thighs felt weird and my legs didn't want to do what legs should do. My lower limbs were short of splayed out and boy was my pace slower. I considered pushing beyond my situation, though better of it and simply made it best I could to my car. Later I noticed the same strange, weak sensation also existed in my forearms.

It was ironic, in a way, because one week earlier I was in for my trip-yearly physical and had one of the best results I ever had. I was a pretty healthy individual.

I had a couple doctors appointment coming up, Rheumatologist and Urologist. I decided to see what they might say before calling my Primary. They said everything was copacetic with me, so I called me Primary and went in to see him.

Now I had some spring allergy sniffles, get them every year, so when I saw the Doc I mentioned this first. He immediately sent out a prescription for an antibiotic.

I know I cover some of this before, but I am pretty angry about this. Health Care is supposed to care for your health, not inflict disease upon you. A week after taking the antibiotic I was septic with Clostridium Difficile, or C. Diff for short, a really nasty affliction that I was told almost killed me.

I am stuck now with this monster inside me, which may break out at any time and for which there is no cure or prevention. I had two hospital stays totally 9 days and a third bout without hospitalization. It is infectious, so the family have to be cautious not to join me in this misery. It interrupted the diagnosis of whatever effected my legs and arms. It has made my son and his wife somewhat fearful to allow me close to my grandson. The medication I am taking causes some change in my taste, so even what foods I can eat often taste bad.

Of course, it brings my mortality to mind. What if's haunt me. I still have no answer for my leg and arm weakness, even after numerous tests and seeing an alphabet soup of specialists. It is now 5 months and I have no answer. So you think, what if it is the beginning of a debilitating condition. How will we survive if both my wife and I have inabilities to do normal daily routines?

I have been afflicted by my doctor and have lost trust in him and the medical industry in general. Plus we, despite insurance, have had our saving deflated and our credit cards inflated by medical bills. (My wife had a knee replacement earlier in the year.



 I put my faith in God, but He knows I have little for the medical profession.

If you want to read how doctor's can prove a danger, like giant germs, read:

My Day as Angelina Jolie & The Saga Continues by Slugmama

http://simpleslug.blogspot.com

What is Hopefully My Final Escape

Yippee ki yay, I'm back on the bedpan again!

But by the fourth day I was no longer suffering that old C. Diff diarrhea. I was actually feeling much better and this was the day they let me bathe myself.

More importantly to me, was at the 7:00 AM staff change. My night nurse brought in the new day shift nurse as they did at every shift change. It was a man, the one and only male nurse I was to have at Christiana Hospital after a long line of female nurses. I immediately perked up, not because I had something for male nurses, but because when I had been in Wilmington Hospital I had but one male nurse as well and he came on duty the morning of my last day there.  Could history repeat and this be my day of discharge from Christiana? I took this as a promising omen.

I began my morning with a series of doctors paying me a visit, Manny, Moe and Jack; or was it Moe, Larry and Curly? No, one

was a lady from the Infectious Disease Center because yes, I had an infectious disease, one they told me was very much so. Anyone coming into my room first had to don a gown and gloves as a precaution. She explained to me that I could get the C. Diff again going forward, it was a stubborn disease and it would forever be a part of my life, like some sneaky criminal lurking in the shadows of my bowels. There was no real cure either and nothing I could do or eat that would prevent it if it choose to strike again. All this because my Primary Physician had put me on an antibiotic for sniffles. Curse you, Cefdiner!  (That's the antibiotic, not my doctor.)

Not long after she left, Dr. Wetherill popped in. He was the attending physician for the hospital. Because of the similarity in the names,  I kept wanting to call him Mr. Weatherbee, the principal from the Archie Comics. Actually, he even looked a bit like Mr. Weatherbee. He told me they were considering discharging me either today or on Saturday. He asked me how I felt about it.

I told him I would love to go home today.

Did I feel strong enough to go home?

Yes, I felt strong enough.

He left with a "We'll consider it."

Consider it well, in fact, put on your Nikes and just do it. 

I called my wife and told her I might be coming home and I'd call her when I knew anything for sure.

Sometime around noon the nurse came in and told me I was being discharged in about a half hour. He took out my IV, which entailed more ripping off of tape and hair. He noted who ever put it on was a bit of a sadist. It used to be a sign of virility for a man to have hairy arms and chest and I guess I was a viral man, but boy it hurt to have tape ripping off that hair. If I want a wax job, I'll go to a salon.

I called my wife again and the phone rang and rang until the voice mail came on. I hung up and tried again. It took 4 tries before my wife answered. She sounded weary and said she had been trying to unclog the vacuum. She sounded so upset I didn't even think to ask her to bring me fresh clothes. I fished through a paper bag on my counter and put on what I had worn into the hospital, shorts and a T-shirt, but still better than the open-backed gown.

I didn't want a repeat of when we left Wilmington Hospital and she  had to wait in the heat because they couldn't find a wheelchair to bring me down. I told her when the wheelchair came I wanted her to go down with me and then get the car. However, things did not go so smoothly this time either.

When the nurse came in to go over my discharge instruction and have me sign the release paper, I asked if he would order the Vancomycin (oh yum, I get to drink that poison four times a day even when I get home) from the pharmacy so we could pick it up on the way out. He did so. He came back and said it would take an hour to prepare, we could wait in the room where we had TV or we could go down and wait in the hallway outside the pharmacy. We choose to stay in the room.

My wife does not have much patience with waiting. The hour seemed to never end and she was getting more and more annoyed, but then the nurse came in and said the hour had passed and he was ordering up a wheelchair.

My escort appeared right behind him, a young lady named Poon. The three of us set off for my exit. Poon then rolled me into the pharmacy and Lois left us to get the car.

Poon assisted in my buying the bottle, which cost $124 because it was not covered by any insurance, and then she rolled me out to the large window fronting the pick up area. 

There we waited and waited, but then a man came up and told her he would watch me. He was the traffic director for the pickup place. Since it was a nice day, he rolled me outside and there we waited and waited.

And waited.

It was like the Philadelphia Airport, car after can pulled in to pick up the recently discharged, but no sign of our red Fit. We waited there, although the guy went off to aid some other people occasionally, while I grow more and more panicked.

I know she walks slow, but even at her pace she should have reached Parking Lot B long ago and it was not a long drive from there to here. Where was she? Christiana Care is a large complex with multi-lanes throughout the parking lot, perhaps she was lost. Or what if she went to the wrong exit?

I asked the guy if there were other entry/exits. At first he said no, but after a bit of prodding it seemed there were at least four: the heart division, but that was just down the driveway in our sight and she would have had to drive past where we were to get there. There was the Emergency Room, where we had originally entered, but I really didn't think she would go there. Then their were two other smaller points.

What if she went to one of those? How would I contact her if she was sitting at pint B and I was at Point A? For that matter, how would I contact her if she were lost in the parking lots? The guy asked about a cell phone. First of all, I thought mine had gone home with her after they admitted me. Second, I didn't think she ever set up her phone when we got new ones a couple months previously, and if she had and had it in her purse, I wasn't sure she would answer it.

It was growing later and I pictured myself sitting alone in my wheelchair as the sun set. I was really wondering how we would ever hook up again when suddenly she came around the bend into the pickup area.

She was pretty frazzled.

We left and I again told her to pull over and let me drive.

She was very upset and blamed the problem on construction they were doing at the hospital. She couldn't turn up the drive she wanted and then she did get lost in the confusion of lots, eventually ending up out on the main road heading toward I-95. She turned around and still had trouble finding the proper lane to the pickup point. 

I kidded about it being like the mazes they use to feature in the children's books, like "Highlight's" and "Jack and Jill" when we were kids.

She didn't really see the humor in it.

I didn't care. I was heading home again, hopefully for good this time. I had no desire to return back to either hospital.

Vindication nearly 50 Years Later: Bob Dylan --Poet

That is Bob Dylan in 1967

In 2016 Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature and thus remains as ground breaking and controversial as ever.

I, however, feel somewhat vindicated by his getting this honor.

Why?

Because in those mid-sixties years I was a ghostwriter, penning college papers for students at St. Joseph and LaSalle Universities in Philadelphia. I myself was attending Temple University as a Sociology major.

In that year, 1967, I was hired to write some speeches for Joe Rubio, who was attending St. Joseph University. One of the speeches I wrote for him was called, "Bob Dylan -- Poet". This was something of a risk, because generally the student had to give their speech before the class and then be subjected to a question and answer period about his or her piece. I spent a lot of time coaching Joe about Dylan, who he knew almost nothing about. Joe's singers of choice were the Four Seasons and Neil Diamond. So, I feared him having to field questions on his speech about Bob Dylan.

I also had no idea how his professor would react to his material. Maybe she hated Dylan, hated folk

music, and thus would have a prejudice against the whole thing. However, we had luck with us. Because of time restrictions, Joe never had to give his speech, he just had to hand in the typed manuscript. He received an "A" and she, his teacher, noted she agreed that Dylan was a poet.

(On the right is me in 1967.)

Below is the speech I wrote:

BOB DYLAN -- POET

John Ciardi has stated that Bob Dylan is not a poet, because “he doesn’t understand poetry and neither do those who listen to him”.  It seems John Ciardi should know.  He is poetry editor of the Saturday Review and has published a dozen poetry volumes, including translations of Dante’s Devine Comedy.  He should know, but I don’t think he does.

Wow!

I must be an upstart!

I don’t think I am.  It’s true; I am only a neophyte poet.  I can’t quote you many lines from any poems either.  I'm really terrible at memorization.  

I sound as if I am really giving support to Mr. Chiarti.

I would be, but I have a couple names on my side too.  Old forms of poetry did not just spring forth with the full support of the public.  It had to establish itself slowly.  I now call my first witness to the stand, Mr. William Wordsworth.

“The revolutionary poet must himself create the taste by which he is judged.  He will be recognized by the public only when the public has recognized itself in the work of the poet.”

Therefore, it can be argued that Bob Dylan’s lyrics are poetry, because his audience recognizes it as such.  It is not Mr. Dylan’s fault that Mr. Ciardi has not found himself in those lines yet.

I present to you the testimony of Elizabeth Drew, author of Poetry.

“(Poetry’s) uses of words are finer and richer and more powerful than those of prose, and it has played a larger part in the whole literary tradition.”

There is no moon, June, spoon lyrics to Dylan’s compositions.  His best lyric is striking in its imagery.  

“Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind/ Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves/ The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach/ Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.”

is from “Mr. Tambourine Man”,

“With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace? And your deck of cards missing the Jack and the ace/ And your basement clothes and your hollow face.”

is from “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”, and look at this verse from “Chimes of Freedom”.

“Tolling for the deaf ‘n’ blind, tolling for the mute/  Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute,/ For the misdemeanor outlaw chased an’ cheated by pursuit/ An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

Those words are sharper than those of prose.  Those words are imagery.  And these are not isolated lyrics.  This is the usual run.  But this is just the lyricism.  What of Miss Drew’s second point?  Does Bob Dylan add to the overall literary scene?

Yes.

Bob Dylan has had a profound effect on young poets.  You can see his influence in the lesser magazines that fringe the art world, underground magazines such as the Psychedelphia Period, and in such art magazines as Evergreen Review and Avant Gard.  It is true there are serious failings in these magazines as far as the general public is concerned, but these are magazines of experimentation, new form, and freedom of expression, and future poets will develop out of them.  We can also see Dylan’s influence on songwriting.  Paul Simon and John Lennon both admit to the influence of Dylan.  John Phillips, Jeremy Clyde and Steve Gillette owe much to him.  Music critics from local newspapers to conductor Leonard Bernstein admit that the Beatles and Bob Dylan have revolutionized pop music and turned it into an art form.

Wordsworth speaks again:

“A poet is a man speaking to men.”

We must admit that Bob Dylan is a man speaking to men about themselves.  Despite John Ciardi’s angry opinion, we must accept Bob Dylan as a poet and his words as poems.  It is not necessary to like the man, or even to like his poems.  We are not forced to agree with them, or with him.  But we should agree that they are poems.  They have imagery.  They speak of man to men.  They are richer and more powerful than prose.  They are far too great to be called merely pop song lyrics and be ranked with Bill Haley’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll”. They have contributed to the field of music and influenced other young poets.  And they have been accepted as poetry by a vast audience.  Remember Wordsworth:

“The revolutionary poet must himself create the taste by which he is judged.”

Mr. Dylan has done that, is doing that, and will continue to do that I’m sure.

“You must leave now, take what you need,

You think will last, But whatever you wish 

to keep, you better grab it fast.”

Those lines open Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”.  It closes my little argument. Grab Bob Dylan and listen.  He is a poet.  He puts his poems to music, but that was what the original poems did.  And he sings them.  But he is a poet. Minor?  Perhaps.  Major?  Who knows?  Poet?  Yes.

BOB DYLAN -- POET 

SOURCES

1. Folk-Rock: The Bob Dylan Story by Sy and Barbara Ribakove 1966

2. Poetry by Elizabeth Drew 1959

3. Bob Dylan Song Book by Bob Dylan 1966

4. The American Folk Scene Edited by David A. DeTurk and A. Poulin, Jr. The section on “Woody and his Children” 1967

5. McCall’s “A Middle-Aged Mother Visits the Teen Scene” by Helen Eustis August 1966

6. The Saturday Evening Post “Bob Dylan: ‘Well, What Have We here?’” by Jules Siegel July 30, 1966

7. Glamour “Bob Dylan: Poet” Summer 1966

8. The Village Voice “New Thing Called Dylan” by Jack Newfield Thursday, September 2, 1965

9. Evergreen Review Various Poetry 1966-1968 Editions

10. Avant Gard Various Poetry 1968 Editions

11. Psychadelphia Period Various Poetry 1967-1968 Editions


Drawings of Bob Dylan by Larry E., 1966

Deja Vu All Over Again

 I had arrived home from my Endoscopy and I felt pretty well. My Home Health Nurse, Leo, showed up in the afternoon and ran the usual check of my vitals. He looked at me and said,
"do you know you have a 101 fever?"

No, I didn't. He took out his phone and called the doctor. He got done talking then told me I was to immediately go to the emergency ward. They thought something had happened during my procedure, like a tear or infection.

So we headed down I-95, my wife driving, but this time we passed Wilmington. I had decided I wanted to go to Christiana Hospital instead. Wilmington and Christiana Hospitals are all part of Christiana Care, but the big complex at Christiana is the mother ship.

We came around and up in front of the emergency ward. I was struggling a bit, but there was no one coming to help. Some people were standing around, but none moved to do anything. This was ticking Lois off and she was none to quiet about it. I went on in and she left to park the car.

I went to the check in window, but the lady there told me to go over to a window to my right. A guy came over and took my info. he told me to go through a gate into the back just as Lois arrived.  We did as he said and I was ushered into a little exam room where further questions were asked and then we were sent into the main waiting room.

There we sat doing what the room was for -- waiting. Lois has no

patience for waiting. She was complaining, in no uncertain terms, and finally got up and went to inquire. Of course, this did little good, but finally my name was called and I was once again in a little curtained exam room, where it was decided to admit me. They wheeled me off in a wheelchair and Lois took some of my things and left for home.

Different hospital, I was now entrapped in Christiana Hospital instead of Wilmington Hospital, but other than the location everything else was familiar. The bed was the same padded prison with the same alarms and the same discomforts. Like before the phone was out of my reach and the window was too distant to look out at the grounds. The TV was the same with its difficult to use control screen. There was a different set of nurses and aids and technicians, but they did the same procedures. One of them put an IV in my left arm, but they did not put a second one in my other arm this time. I guess we can count that as different. Each morning the vampire came by to draw vials of blood, although this one did have a sense of humor. I was injected in the stomach twice a day as before and fed that evil Vancomycin four times a day.


And the raging diarrhea was back, I was having my second bout with Clostridium difficile, or C. Diff as they called it for convenience sake. So I was wearing only the very exposing thin gown with the open back and riding the bedpan once more.

By the third day, once again, the diarrhea had lessened and they were allowing me to walk over to a commode chair when my bowels moved. It was all routine to me now. 

One thing was definitely different and welcome. This nurse asked if I would like to bathe. Oh, yes, indeed I would. I had spent 5 days in Wilmington Hospital without any such thing as a bath or shower. Now I pictured a scene from Seinfeld (the whole world can be defined by Seinfeld scenes). George was visiting his mother in the hospital and behind him was a curtain hiding the other occupant of the room. Suddenly a beautiful nurse appeared saying she had come to give the patient a spong bath. You saw just the dark silhouettes behind the curtain.

This is what I pictured in my mind: A beautiful nurse comes in with a washpan and strips off my gown to wash me with a sponge. Ah, the kind of fantasy I had when a teenager. Of course, the reality was not quite living up to the imagination. A nurse, who was perfectly fine looking, did come in with a washpan, but she continued into the bathroom. She then pushed a chair into there and came and got me out of bed. 

I waddled into the bathroom and the washpan of hot water and a washcloth were in the sink before the chair. I was left alone then to wash myself. There was the hot water and soft washcloth and body wash and lotion on the counter. I stripped and did that warm wash ever feel good. There was even a glass holding a fresh toothbrush, toothpaste and mouth wash for me, which I made use of and then I dried off and slipped on a clean, fresh gown that was hung on the back of the door.

I called out I was finished, but got no answer, so I walked out to the bed myself. My room was empty of anyone else, but as soon as I sat on the bed alarms rang out and the nurse quickly appeared.

Each shift change the nurse that had been in charge would come in to introduce the next head nurse. On the fourth morning, at 7:00 AM when this occurred I was introduced to a male nurse, the only male nurse I had that week. I took this as a good omen. I had one male nurse during my imprisonment at Wilmington Hospital and he was the one on duty with I was released.  Could it happen again?


To Be Continued...

Home is Where You Are Safe and Secure, Isn't it?

There I sit waiting on the wheelchair to ride me out of that room and out of that hospital. And eventually one came and soon I was back in my castle, a bit weak, but thrilled to be home away from jabbing needles.  I felt not too bad.

All I had to do was rest and take that wonderful Vancomycin four times daily. You took it by filling a syringe with 2.5 mm and then squirting it into your mouth and down the throat. It had an awful taste.

Of course, before I could delight in that taste, I had to figure out how to get it from the bottle to the syringe. It came to me in three pieces: the bottle of stuff itself, the syringe and some funny looking little plastic round doodad. I tried sticking the tip of the syringe in the top of the bottle and pulling back the plunger to suck in some elixir, but that didn't work.

Fortunately, my Daughter Laurel is a VetTech and she knew how it worked. Isn't that nice, I had to go to an animal nurse to learn how to take my human medicine. You see that funny looking round thing had to be pushed down into the mouth of the bottle, where it fit quite snuggly. There was a hole in the center of the now snuggly-fitted plastic round thing.

You shook the bottle well, then you inserted the syringe tip into the hole, turned it all upside down and then drew back on the plunger until you sucked in 2.5 mm. After that you pulled the syringe from the bottle and shot it into your mouth, put the cap back on the bottle and placed it in the refrigerator until the next use.

I was instructed to do this for 14 days.

I certainly didn't expect what came next.

I had been told I could eat certain foods, sauerkraut and fermented vegetables, and a lot of yogurt. One of the ladies, Pat Himmelstein, from Iron Faith Fellowship brought us a meal of hot dogs, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, always one of my favorites. My daughter got about three meals out of this, I think. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I did notice a pain in my stomach and some upset that evening.

This pain was right at where the stomach meets the diaphragm continued and to some degree so did the stomach upset. Every time I ate anything both pain and upset got worse. In fact, the upset was like an angry sea tearing down a shore town. It was intense as was the pain and it went on for long hours. It was there every day and getting worse. I couldn't sleep because of it. I moved from the bedroom to the living room sofa, displacing some disgruntled cats, just so I didn't disturb my wife's sleep.

This upset and pain was so bad I stopped eating, because it intensified whenever I ate anything. I barely ate or drank anything over the next two weeks. I was getting weaker and losing weight.  Yes, it had lessened some after I was through taking the Vancomycin, but not enough that I was willing to endure food. After another week, I was so bad I told Lois I was going to put myself back in the hospital.

It was on that day that Leo, the home health nurse, came to visit. He saw I was in distress, that I was badly dehydrated. He was the first person who actually took the time to listen to my tale of woe. He made a lot of notes, then called the doctor. I was told to go see my family physician at 11:30 the next morning.

This is the doctor who gave me the antibiotic that gave me the C. Diff so I was feeling a bit of animosity toward him, but I went. After his exam, which showed I weighed 165 pounds, down from 180+ when I had first went into the hospital, he issued an order for blood work -stat, a prescription for Prilosec and set up an Endoscopy. We immediately went for the blood work, and what happened there was a story in itself and sometime I will tell it, then we picked up the prescription and I waited to hear from the Gastroenterologist on my appointment. (This appointment making is another tale for later.)

The Prilosec actually ended my pain and stomach upset, allowing me to eat again. I had been on Prilosec ever since I had a colonoscopy in 2012, but the hospital had removed it from my medications. The pain and upset were side effects of Vancomycin and the Prilosec would have saved me from that suffering.

My endoscopy was on Tuesday the 20th at 9:00, but they wanted me there at 7:00 AM. Knowing my wife was not a early riser and considering she might be erratic driving from lack of sleep,  I arranged for another church lady, Jean Harris, to drive me. (I would be doped up for the procedure and not able to drive after I had it, so I needed a driver.)

They found two ulcers in my stomach, which they sealed up. I was brought home and dropped off. That same afternoon, Leo the nurse, again stopped by. He took my vitals and I had a temperature of 101 degrees. He immediately called my doctor and guess where I was headed off to next?

Hospital stay number two!