the other INNquisition

You probably seen movies or heard stories about the various tortures of the inquisition, well it continues today.

Imagine a large metal device with ropes attached to it, they place you on an unstable pink ball, tell you to maintain 1 leg in the air, while being tied to the metal device and having to pull down on the ropes.

Or they lay you down on the floor and tie your leg to the same metal device and pulling on it.

Other instruments of torture include standing on something very unstable, on one leg while bouncing a heavy ball on a leaning trampoline, walking the “monster walk” while your legs are bound together.

 

But apparently they call this innquistion physical therapy

The more astonishing issue is that its working

Its 6 weeks after my surgery and I am finally walking normal, the limp is gone, crutches are gone, chest pains are gone, calf pains are gone, things are looking better, though my activities are forever limited, which is still kind of depressing, need to completely change my goals.

Last year I aspired to do a triathlon, after the half marathon , but that plan is out.

So goal for next summer is a long bike race, and perhaps a long swim (though I am not allowed to do breast stroke yet)- will see what will be allowed and what not, hoping orienteering is still ok (next year)- I will have to consider my options when winter ends, till then keep doing the self torture… it’s not as bad as described above, it’s actually very creative, the usage of random devices to get you body to do a certain ‘good for you’ movement instead of other ‘bad for me’ moves.

Thanks Inna for getting me back on my feet.

 

Last weekend Alec (my brother’s in law father…does that make him my father in law? Probably not) well had his 70^th birthday and it was held at the Russian room.

I heard about this party room before but never been here, I was kind of suspicious about food, here I always find something to eat that I like, in the beginning I would find 1 item and stick to that, but since then, I think the family has modified their menus for simpler stuff (thanks all for that) so it’s better for me. But this was an authentic Russian cuisine, but I was happily surprised, at least 5 things that I liked a lot, must be a record.

It was a fun event, lots of speeches, live Russian band, dancing. I danced as well, which I didn’t think I would so fast, and it felt great. True I was mostly standing on my strong leg, but still, dancing is dancing.

 

The weekend before we went to a Romanian festival. There are lots of local festivals here by the various communities, each does its own thing. We tried some Mamaliga(didn’t like it), Romanian kabobs, and some other delicacies. There were also life Romanian bands (from Romania!) with some nice live Falk music and the people danced (we didn’t), we didn’t stay long but it was a fun lively event. I am half Romanian , but didn’t recognize the music, the other half of me is polish, the polish festival is coming up within a month, will see if the pirugy is any good.

 

 

Well that’s it, nothing interesting lately, started going to the gym , with the limited activities I can do, but so far the 9 day hospital stay and the diet after that resulted in loss of 10lbs J and the way down continues, so nothing in life is all bad.

 

I hope to resume more fun activities soon, labor day activities are coming up (including genesis and led zeppelin cover bands), we’ll see what we’ll do

 

cheers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a moment in the light

Still at the hospital, doing better again, a few hours after sending the previous entry it got bad again, I guess blogging is a hazardous activity.

 

It started with stronger chest pains again, always on the right side, the doc said my pathways to the lower lobe of the right lung and not reacting, so I had a chest X-ray  (yeh, another new test). The pain levels were like 2-3 days prior which was odd since I was doing so well up to this point. I took my first pain med, I didn't take any pain meds since day 2 after surgery, but I took it mainly for the headache and slept a while and woke with worse pain in the chest, the highest all week, this was now about 10 PM and I asked for the attending doc. This nice doc annoyed the nurse greatly and after a long debate agreed to come "when he had time". Nurse Natisha was agitated about this guy so I was already resentful before I met him. He finally came in saying that PE should not cause chest pain, funny because PE is what I have and chest pain is my main symptom this past week. After long debate, he didn't want to have me checked, refused to call the vascular guys, he was very anti, I took 2 Vicodins now for pain and Ativan which is a muscle relaxer and suppose to help me sleep. Pain was slightly tolerable again but still high.

Sensing something is not right Alla called for the Calvary and Inna and Rita (Alla's sisters) came by. The doc wouldn't even speak to Rita, a fellow doctor, he had to be coursed. This was around midnight.

 

Around 1 the unexpected happen. It started with cramping of the extreme right side of the stomach, which is the area where the lower lobe ends, at first it was annoyance and strange and quickly it became unbearable.

 

I was barely breathing. Actually was breathing in a pace of more than a breath a second, each very rapid and very very painful. I could no longer control my breathing and couldn't even call for help, lucky I was not alone and Rita called the nurses while Alla on the phone called in a "code blue".

True I was not in a true code blue situation since I was breathing, but it didn't matter, I was in a major distress.

The entire code blue team came by , the room was stuffed with new faces. The pain was horrible but I was fully alert (I wished I wasn't). I recall the staff member on the left side actually disappointed that this was not a code blue and dropping something on the bad, for the 1^st 2 minutes, while I am twitching in my bed, they tried to identify who called in the code blue (no one admitted) and tried to get an IV line in (they took it off the day before).

Alla and Inna were not kicked out of the room and stood behind the aprox 10 staff members who were there, I couldn't spot Waldo anywhere.

I was still twitching like crazy and struggling to breath, I forced myself to relax, by not breathing, trying to pause between breaths, it worked a bit and the pain decreased from inferno to just plain hell. They still struggled with the IV, the head code blue nurse entered the IV and went through! the vein, there went that attempt, and I was asking to put the IV in the elbow area, not in the palm. I was given morphine IM – a shot to the hand, the problem with this route is that it takes a while to kick in, but hell was nearing over at this point, now they tried the iv , in the arm below the elbow joint, which finally worked, they took some blood for samples, then more morphine to the vein, which reacts fast, and pain became tolerable once more. This whole episode took about 10-15 minutes, the worse I have ever felt. The issue was not over yet, I still didn't know why it happened, but the morphine was taking more and more affect (thanx god), I had another chest x-ray, in bed this time, they have a mobile device, but they had to put a panel behind my back and that hurt, and another echo cardiogram, also a mobile device, which hurt. After that, blessed sleep took over.

 

Had another CT in the morning, this time I came prepared, took Zofran to counter the nausea and more morphine since CT requires lying down and that I bad. Even with the morphine it was very painful in the chest but bearable, no nausea.

The good news is that it was not another blood clot(shark), but results of the current one. Because of the clot, lung tissue receives no oxygen or blood and dies(necrosis), and that is painful, I was told this is the exact pain that heart attack feels like, since there too the tissue dies, but my heart is good, no damage there.

I will have a scar in the lung but should not suffer in the future because of it.

 

Since then pain is decreasing greatly and almost as good as Thursday morning. I have a "coach 2" device, which is a breathing trainer, forcing the lungs to work to get air in to the bad lobe (אונה) , and today its beginning to work again which is great progress.

My INR (מדד קרישה) reached 1.9 yesterday ( I need 2-3) and today it went down L , so my Coumadin dose will increase again today, now it looks like a Tuesday Wednesday discharge, I have been here too long, but we went on a long walk yesterday and over all I am doing much better, and will get off the crutches completely today or tomorrow, so the hip is doing well.

 

That's it, no other special occurrences since Thursday, don't want any again.

 

Oh, the light thing, I saw a white light, but it came from the lamps, I was dark in the room before (1 am) so when they opened the lights to full I couldn't fully open my eyes or move my hands to cover them, nothing more…

 

 

 

 

 

 

home is where the heart monitor is

As you may or may not know I am in the hospital at the moment for complications of Pulmonary embolism (קריש דם בריאה). Doing much better now, seeing the discharge at the end of the tunnel.

 

Here is my top 10 tips for going to the emergency room

·         Make sure you truly have something serious, if not you are not critical, you are not priority, you will wait hours

·         Bring a book, you are obviously not critical enough, or you would have been admitted by now, a heart attack is not critical enough for us…. Wait

·         Bring food, you can be in the ER from 3 pm till 1 am- and you will not be offered a single morsel of food or water!!!

·         Make sure you go to a top rated facility, I did (top 4 in the US) these lessons are from the good facility, I don't want to know what happens at less rated ones.

·         If you are on any meds, bring your home supply, if you expect the ER to provide you will be disappointed

·         Chase nurses to perform tests on time! Some tests done too late are useless

·         Bring a lemon (the dye in the CT liquid makes you sick)

·         Bring another book…

·         Make sure the registration nurse write down your complaint, you say chest pain, they write down something else, you are not critical..see rule 1

·         Sorry the above list should have been funnier, but seriously come prepared!!!

o   Cell charger

o   Pillow

o   Blanket

o   Small bills (for vending machine)

o   The number for a pizza shop

 

So after the lovely ER experience it was time to be transferred to the main building, the transfer here is super fast, only took an hour and a half. The irony here is that someone in the ER waits outside (because they haven't read the above list) and waiting for the bed that I am currently in…sad.

 

Nurse Paul greets us at the ward along with doctor rewis, the doc looks like a male model, not even in a doctors coat. Rita (alla's sister who is a pediatrician) is with us and she asks doc model to ask for a vascular consult, otherwise I will wait another day before they see me. They speak in doctorish so they are suppose to understand each other. moDoc says no problems and no surprise in the morning, the request was not made. At this time my symptoms are still chest pain as a result of the blood shark. For the non Hebrew speakers, the words shark and clot sound the same in Hebrew, kind of C vs K (כריש,קריש). So I am calling it a blood shark, since it's a big shark it was upgraded to a small whale, killer whale, but not a huge whale, unfortunately Willie was freed and swam to the lungs.

 

Vascular did come the next morning, because we intercepted nurse Paul and various tests began, I had 2 CTs, heart echo cardio gram, Dopler test on my feet, spleen ultra sound. The good news is that there was no affect on the heart or other organs, but it had to be ruled out, the lungs however operate in 80% mode (this was a few days ago, I feel its close to normal now). It's weird the numbers, I thought my lungs are 20% not functioning, Rita stressed , no its 80% functioning.

If you need a test done, I recommend MRI, you just lie there and hear music on the head phones and do nothing, few minutes and you are done.

Eco cardiogram is not fun since they have to push the ultra sound device to the skin to get a better reading, but if your chest hurts and if it hurts more when lying down, is even worse- 10 15 minutes of minor medieval torture and you are done.

Ultra sound is better, I had 3 done this last week, the jell is cold , and they do apply some pressure, but it's not bad.

CT (סריקת חתול) is the worse. You have to lie down (which was painful at the time (less now)) and get injected with dye.

First you have a weird taste, than the whole body becomes hot, especially in certain places which I will not specify. But the nausea is bad. Lucky (rule 3 above) they don't feed you in the ER so I did throw up , but had nothing to throw up. Lucky this bad affects lasts about 2-3 minutes. My 2^nd CT had similar symptoms , but not as bad, I am developing immunity to cats.

 

Other than that, they keep sucking my blood. If lab comes to take your blood, don't tell them how to do it, just don't.

In the beginning they took it from the inner elbow where it's usually taken, on the 3^rd time I suggested it should be taken from other veins. Bad move. A nurse hit a bone in the palm (yes short but strong pain), other veins are just more pain full. So after few attempts I gave up, please don't even fight it, let them do their thing. Lab guy Derek this morning is over 6 feet, not the kind of guy you want to stick you, but so far he proved the most gentle of all.

 

The IV was finally taken off yesterday, I wasn't on IV, just had the tube just in case, it was more a major nuisance than pain, but I am glad they took it off.

 

The heart monitor is a minor problem. You get 6 stickers on your chest and mid section. True, I don't have the robin Williams syndrome, but I highly recommend shaving your chest before you go to the hospital, I wish I had.

After every test (CT and such) which happens in other rooms, they always forget to plug me back to the monitor. And I spend hours without it (but the stickers are on me). Today, when I am Cleary with no need for the heart monitor, after a shower and slowly (aahahaha) slowly removing the stickers, I thought I could be without it. The nurse comes in saying the heart monitoring team is asking about my monitor, they were never there when I possibly needed it, but now they do.

 

I am taking Lovenox for the past week, it's a nice injection which I inject myself to the love handles area, I have a lot of area there, so you swipe the area with alcohol, pinch your stomach and inject, they say do it fast, I do it slow because its scary as hell. Even after 14 shots or so, it's still scary.

The Coumadin is a regular pill so no comments other then the color. 5mgs is peach, but I don't know how to recognize the color peach, I have peaches here, they don't look anything like the pill, I don't think I would eat a peach if it was in the color of the pill.

 

Food here is decent.

 

The bed is nice and can be maneuvered, legs part goes up and down, head rest goes up and down (auto) and the bed it self, parts of it goes up and down to prevent bed sores, nice thing.

 

The TV remote has up and down buttons, not numbers so I have to keep zapping, after a few days with tv, I feel better about not having cable at home.

The 1^st 2.5 days I was without my lap pat, and didn't miss it one bit, but a funny thing happened. Alla brought our wedding movie (the uncut version, part 2 which we have not yet seen) and somehow managed to push it into the area above the disk drive, so it's in the lap top and we have to figure out how o remove it without scratching it.

Btw- 'saved by the bell' is still on the air!! Please help me change it….

 

I am not allowed more than tiny amounts of vitamin K, lucky for me I almost eat nothing with Vitamin k – apparently lots of green vegetables have it. I have a whole list of produce that I should avoid, 97.6% of those I don't eat any way but some I do

Garlic, mustard are out, I love mustard.

Collard is also out, I didn't even know collard was a spice or vegetable, I thought it was something they hang in Mississippi! But apparently it is, the list had a couple of more names I didn't recognize, none was joke worthy.

 

Yesterday we took a field trip to the roof, it's an observation deck which overlooks the neither Cleveland down town- or  better known as 'the mistake by the lake'. Cleveland was voted # 2 on the worst cities to live in. this doesn't apply to the suburbs directly, but indirectly it probably does. The view is nice, the down town, the lake. It strange but everything (houses, factories, roads, lake, sky scrapers) all seem natural, from my vantage point the only thing that didn't fit was a huge MacDonald sign.

 

The staff here is very diverse

I had an Albanian nurse, a seek resident (probably misspelled) , a Korean vascular resident, a Brazilian vascular doctor, a Syrian head of internal department (I never would have guessed I would be treated by Syrians), a friendly creation transport guy who fondly remembers Croatia, I think I missed few nationalities. Oh also some fellow (in fellowship) who did his doctorate on medicinal marijuana, not sure if study involves self testing or not.

With doctors, its funny

 

My first roomi was quickly discharged, I had the room to myself for a day, then a new renter came along with enlarged pancreas (לבלב). My new roomi is in a worse condition and today we heard the doctors say he may have HIV, he suffers from various infections. Infections are not good for me after surgery, so we asked to relocate to another room.

We got a nice private room, with a view to the helipad, I wasn't there even a minute when a nurse comes in saying I can't stay there, since another infection patient is coming and must have the private room. But lucky 2 patients were discharged, so I waited a few hours for a room to free up and now I am in a private room that has  view of the helipad, but I cannot see the helipad from the bed, I need the helipad moved…

 

Doctors are gods and gods make mistakes…

 

The reason while I am still in here is for my INR to go up- the INR measures the blood sharkness levels- mine is normal, but needs to be above normal (much more diluted) to resolve the clot.

Its higher now, but still on the range considered normal, so I am getting higher doses of Coumadin and keep checking this value

 

Its rare after the surgery I had to develop a clot- 2%, its rare for a person with clot on lovenox to develop PE- also under 2%. Do the math, I am a rare kind of guy…

 

At some point while the clot was in the thigh , I was a candidate for another form of invasive therapy, which a catheter is inserted to the vein and some clot buster material is spread directly on the clot shark. This part is fine but there is a risk of bleeding (from anywhere, yes anywhere) and radiation and other crap. I guess I am lucky the clot moved from the thigh, too bad it moved to the lungs. So I am no longer a candidate, just getting the usual therapy.

 

Ok, enough for now, I think this entry is a candidate for longest blog ever….

 

Refua shlema….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FW: Invitation to view gil.even's Picasa Web Album - 06-2010-26 kansas, styx and foriegner

These photos of from may 30^th… sorry for the delay

From the triple classic concert-

You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 06-2010-26 kansas, styx and foriegner 06-2010-26 kansas, styx and foriegner Jun 26, 2010 by gil.even View Album Play slideshow Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. Try it out here: http://picasa.google.com/ If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=gil.even&target=ALBUM&id=5504476313201159905&authkey=Gv1sRgCLPTzdGS4rKSCw&invite=CPHOjr8P&feat=email To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.

 

the wedding video- part 1 (14 minutes)

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=media#!/video/video.php?v=482788677795

 

 

FW: Invitation to view gil.even's Picasa Web Album - ein gedi

 

You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: ein gedi ein gedi Jun 15, 2010 by gil.even View Album Play slideshow Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. Try it out here: http://picasa.google.com/ If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=gil.even&target=ALBUM&id=5500621417405400769&authkey=Gv1sRgCO7w1PTorY3i6gE&invite=CLKX1MQP&feat=email To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.