Rocky Roads
7. A. In Sickness and in Health....
"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." - Poor Richard (aka Benjamin Franklin)
Enduring health is so easy a task for any married couple, no one ever thinks of it as a trial. Sickness however, to one's spouse, self or kids can be extremely trying, as will be demonstrated. Ben Franklin actually just restated an even older English proverb in rhyme for his quote from Poor Richard's almanac. The to bed and rising part may not be true, but the order of health and wealth is undoubtedly true, as you'll see.
If you've read this far, you've probably realized that I had been quite athletic. That wasn't always so. As a child, I was the sickly and accident prone one of the three brothers, and the middle child of the three brothers. (That's the one who is asking "What did I do?" And having no idea of what lowly activity his two brothers were blaming him for.) I had far more accidents than my brothers. I remember stepping on a nail in a concrete form that had been haphazardly left with the nails pointing up by a work crew in Milwaukee. I also remember sitting down in a child's size lawn chair in the back yard of one my friends and having the lawn chair fold up as I sat done in it, and the chair actually pinching off the tip of my right ring finger, right at the base of the finger nail. Fortunately most of the finger grew back. There were also all the trips to the doctor to stitch up a split head or finger with a couple of stitches. All this happened before I was five years of age. All through my childhood, I had countless middle and inner ear infections (resulting in my hearing being excellent at very low and very high frequencies, but at the lower edge of normal in between.) At five I also vividly remember having measles. And having both my parents being extremely worried (my fever spiked to 105oF for a day). I didn't feel all that bad, and was unhappy to be confined to bed, since we had just gotten a new dog, and I got to see the dog for maybe 20 seconds. Then both my brothers and father went outside to play with the dog. Not long after that I had tonsillitis and they did the typical 1950's cure...they got yanked. I do remember being put under in the hospital with ether for the tonsillectomy. Later that year, in the summer, we moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Paramus, New Jersey.
We didn't move directly into our house in Paramus, since there was some hold up in the escrow. We stayed in a motel for about a month and a half. When we finally did move into the house, it was the day before school was supposed to start. I was overjoyed to see my bicycle come off the moving van. I immediately got on the bike and took it for a ride (essentially one big block more or less in the middle of nowhere) riding as fast as I could go. After the third turn, I looked up to see a large pile of sand and gravel in the way in the middle of the street, and I was going too fast to have any hope of avoiding it. I hit the pile and slid through all the stuff on my left side. I managed to limp home with my bike (which had suffered much less damage than I had). My parents took one look at me and immediately got me to the doctor. The doctor spent close to an hour cleaning the wounds, trying to get all the sand and gravel out. I was essentially sanded from my left shoulder all the way down to my left ankle. The doctor did a good job, but he did miss a couple of things. I actually still have a little bit of sand embedded in my left knee 49 years later, and a recent x-ray has revealed that there's a piece of gravel embedded in my left hip still. My mother of course was mortified, and didn't want to send me to school the next day. My father said I should go (and I agreed with him) and so I did. During my stay in New Jersey I didn't have many significant health issues after that. After three years in New Jersey we moved to Green Hills, Ohio (suburb of Cincinnati). While I lived there a pattern started. At the beginning of each school year, I'd have some kind of low grade sickness. The doctors would always think it was mononucleosis or some related disease. And so I'd give an extremely large blood sample for them to test for a variety of things. They never would find anything that they could identify. I think I got tested for mono at the beginning every school year after that, all the way through college where the team physician for the track team was the one suspicious. I don't know what I had but it wasn't mono. While we lived in Greenhills, I started having nosebleeds. Not just little sniffling kind of nosebleeds. You could set your watch by them. Between 5:00 pm and 5:15 pm, I'd get a nosebleed and it would gush for between thirty minutes and forty-five minutes before I could get it stopped with my parents' help. It finally got so bad, that something had to be done. My parents made an appointment for my brother Mike to get a small polyp removed from his uvula, and for me to have my nose electrocauterized to build up scar tissue and hopefully put a stop to the nosebleeds. We went to see the ear, nose and throat surgeon. Both these procedures were simple enough they could be done in the office. Mike's surgery went first and all went well...then it was my turn. The surgeon tried to give me a shot of novocaine in the roof of my mouth to deaden the nose. The problem was that from my mother's side of the family, I've inherited a trait in which there is a bony ridge down the center of my upper palate. The surgeon tried to inject the novocaine into the bone, and of course the needle just skidded away and all the novocaine went down my throat. The surgeon was reluctant to give me any more novocaine, because he said he was unsure of how much of a dose I'd gotten. I kept telling him none, but he didn't seem to believe that. I can still vividly remember the taste of the novocaine as it went down the back of my throat. So the surgeon started the procedure and I had essentially zero anesthetic. The tears were rolling out of my eyes during the procedure, but I didn't say anything. It was a painful process. I wonder if the dents from how hard I was holding onto the padded rails of the chair ever came out. The only good thing was that the electrocauterization did work. I had remarkably fewer nosebleeds. Prior to this procedure I'd sometimes get a nosebleed from just turning my head a little too rapidly. After it, I need to get a pretty good blow to the nose for one to occur. We then moved to Villa Park, Illinois (suburb of Chicago) in January of of 1965.
In Villa Park,Illinois is where I ended up seeming to become ill for the first time due to strep. I had strep at least twice (possibly three times). It was obvious to me when I had strep. I'd usually wake up in the middle of the night feeling hot and sickly. I'd get out of bed and try to stand up (I always immediately fell down). Then I'd crawl my way to the bathroom, manage to pry myself upright enough to retrieve the thermometer, sit back down on the floor of the bathroom and take my temperature. It would always be 103 something. And that's where someone would find me the next morning, since I couldn't make it back to bed. To this day if someone says they have strep throat, you'll see me going the opposite direction. The other problem was that every time I came down with strep, the doctors would hear a slight heart murmur. The murmur would disappear after the illness did. During seventh and eighth grade in Villa Park, I became interested in high jumping. In seventh grade I did a scissor kick type of jump, but after observing everyone at our only meet, it was obvious to me that I needed to learn how to do the straddle roll (none of the other competitors were doing it). I taught myself the straddle roll and by the beginning of track season in the eighth grade, and had improved eight inches over the previous year. One day the coach decided it was too cold outside to practice, so they brought the standards and bar into the gym to practice high jump. The second jump indoors that I took, I felt my left foot slip out from under me. I put out my left arm to break my fall and heard, rather than felt, a loud "Crack!!" It was both bones in my left forearm breaking cleanly. Then the mass of my body shifted the bones slightly and overlapped an inch and a half of my left hand and wrist and broken bones on top of the remaining forearm bones....all without breaking the skin. I rolled over cradling my arm, my back to my teammates and said "I think I broke my arm." And they said "No, you didn't!!" But when I turned around they could all see that something was drastically wrong. Forearms aren't supposed to be "S" shaped. They got the coach who had just stepped into his office to retrieve something and the shop teacher from across the hall. My arm was quickly splinted with help from the coach and shop teacher and the track team manager. Fortunately my father was home so he picked me up, and he stopped at home to tell my mother what was going on. (And of course Mom wanted me to take a bath, and didn't want me to go to the hospital in those sweaty gym clothes. Dad overruled her.) We got to the hospital and they took the X-rays. And then I sat there for an hour and a half while the doctors argued about how they were going to set this broken arm. They finally told me to get up on a gurney and they gave me a general anesthetic. They set the arm while I was out. The arm would be in a half cast for two weeks, after which they X-rayed it again to make sure everything was healing properly and then put it in a full cast for another six weeks. When the cast was removed, the arm had atrophied a great amount, and the elbow had calcified a great amount. I couldn't reach my own mouth with my left hand and I couldn't quite straighten my left arm either. During this time, I'd been taken to the orthodontist, seeing what needed to be done to make my mouth functional. My mouth was way too small for all the teeth to fit into it. They pulled four teeth (two uppers and two lowers) to create some more room. The other problem was that one of my lower incisors had never come in, and was actually embedded in my jaw. The plan was to loosen it from my jaw and put a platinum wire around it so the tooth could be cranked up slowly into position with the other teeth being banded normally for straightening. The oral surgery was done by an oral surgeon with the unfortunate name of Dr. Hammer. Dr. Hammer gave me so much novocaine that only a small portion at the crown of my head wasn't numb. He also didn't have an assistant and kept wanting me to hold things with my left hand...which I couldn't even get withing six inches of my mouth due to the calcium deposits in my elbow. I'd only had the cast removed two days before. I managed to survive the surgery, but even with all the novocaine, I ended up with a splitting headache. About a week later, all the bands were put on and everything was in place. A few days after that, I was walking along and swung my left arm a little more vigorously than I had been doing. There was a loud "Crack!" and I fell down with the pain. But the pain was fleeting, the calcium deposit that had been limiting the movement of my left arm had apparently cracked away and I now had full movement of my left arm. But that summer we moved again, this time to La Habra, California (suburb of Los Angeles).
We arrived in La Habra three days before high school began. I had a few small mishaps which required a stitch or two, but nothing major. I didn't have very many health issues until my senior year, where I came down with a series of relatively minor illnesses. The most serious was a severe sinus infection, which kept me out of school for a little over two weeks. My friends brought my assignments and my younger brother would drop off my homework for me. (A big change from today, when attendance is the big thing. Back then, it was performance.) In the fall of 1971 I started at Cal State Fullerton. Things went well until 1973, when I injured my right knee. I've already detailed that episode. The next big thing was getting sprayed by nitric acid in early May of 1975 when I tried to recover some mercury from sodium amalgam that I incorrectly had tried to inactivate. While I was at UCLA in January of 1976 I injured my left knee which required surgery. In the spring of 1978, I had another bout with strep throat, that took me a full week to recover. And during that bout, the heart murmur was back, but once again disappeared once I was over the illness.
After Valerie and I had married and moved to Midland, both our health situations looked pretty good until early 1983. We'd had our first child, who was healthy. I managed to come down with a severe case of pneumonia early in 1983 (although if you get my medical records all they will say is "acute bronchitis." The only reason for that is that by the time I got to the doctor, I'd already coughed up everything out of my lungs.) All that coughing did a job on my lungs, throat and vocal cords. The doctor kept me off work for six weeks. During the six weeks I couldn't speak. After six weeks were up I could sort of croak. It took a long while for me to get my true voice back. During December 1984 I had a bout with a very mild flu. After Christmas, I ended up on a diet to lose a few pounds. After I lost the weight I wanted, I went off the diet...and kept losing weight. I was also having tremendous leg cramps at night. The doctor put me on a high potassium diet, the type he prescribed for me was also relatively high calorie to try and regain a little bit of weight. A month later a blood glucose test revealed that I had a blood glucose of 440 mg/dL, about four times what it should be. I was immediately put into the hospital. There is no history of diabetes in my family. They believe that I'm one of those cases of virally induced diabetes. Certain strains of measles and flu can have protein coats similar to the cells in the pancreas. When that happens you end up with an autoimmune induced diabetes. So I've been dealing with the diabetes now for 22+ years. The other illness that I had while at Dow was viral infections of both inner ears, which led to severe vertigo. It was so bad, that even trying all the tricks (closing eyes, staring at a fixed point, etc.) to help with vertigo had no effect. I was prescribed the antihistamine meclizine. Meclizine has a warning on it saying "may cause drowsiness." That warning is wrong. It should say "Will cause sleep!" But it is effective in treating vertigo about ten minutes after taking it. For me however, that meant about five minutes without vertigo before I fell asleep at fifteen minutes. I did recover from that after two weeks, but felt sickly and puny for another week and a half after going back to work (You can't work if you can't stand up!!)
In the summer of 1987 we moved to southwest Louisiana, where I now teach at a regional state university. This move came along with a $13,000 pay cut, but it was a job that I felt I had to take if I was ever going to get into academia. When you make such a move, you have to take it on faith that the health of your family, and everything else is going to work out. The fall of 1987 was not a problem. In the spring of 1988, however, our oldest daughter, Bridget, became ill. She was five years old and when healthy weighted 35 pounds. She caught some infection and all of a sudden she couldn't keep anything down. To a five year old, the equation is simple: If eating makes you vomit, stop eating. To a parent this is very distressing. How do you persuade your child to eat something, ANYTHING!! Bridget ended up in the hospital here, and eventually was transferred to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. Valerie stayed with Bridget while I worked and on the weekends I'd take our younger daughter, Briana, with me to Houston where I'd book a room for Valerie and Briana for the weekend. I'd then stay with Bridget during the weekend, allowing Valerie at least a little bit of rest. At first friends from our church looked after Briana when I was working. Eventually my mother flew out to give us a hand. After three and a half weeks and an endoscopy it was determined that the infection had caused Bridget to have gastric reflux and irritate a spot just above the stomach in her esophagus. The treatment was Tagamet syrup and tube feedings to put some weight back on her, all of which could be done at home. Five and a half weeks in the hospital, for something these days that could be treated with an over-the-counter medicine. Plus all the tests they had run fishing for straws: Two upper GIs, MRIs of Bridget's head, X-rays, etc. A bit later in the spring, in early May, Valerie ended up in the hospital for an ovarian cyst. The doctor was rather conservative, trying some non-surgical techniques, which ultimately worked, but that didn't really relieve my fretting at all. Another five days in the hospital for one of us.
A few years later Bridget came down with tonsillitis. They gave her the standard treatment. It didn't work. She ended up in the hospital, where they had to culture things to see what type of infection she had. Probably 99% of kids with tonsillitis have a strep infection. Not Bridget...her tonsillitis was due to staph. Change antibiotics, put her back on the Tagamet, so she can keep food down,and things improved rapidly. About two years later Bridget again came down with tonsillitis, serious enough that she had to once again spend time in the hospital. The same treatment helped her recover more rapidly this time.
We discovered that both our daughters had scoliosis. Bridget ended up having to wear a brace made of solid nylon for about two years. Briana's case was more severe and would require surgery. When Briana was in middle school, things got so bad, she couldn't sit through classes anymore, due to the pain. She was twelve and a bit younger than they like to do surgery on, but things were too severe to let things go any longer. We managed to find a good surgeon in New Orleans who enrolled Briana in a study, which meant we got no bill from him. But the hospital stay for a week was a different story. Briana recovered rather rapidly, but now has two stainless steel rods on either side of her spine to align things. It straightened her back out, but obviously at the loss of flexibility. It also limited her height, so she is the shortest in the family at 4'10". (Bridget is only two inches taller).
I had problems as well, but this was due to an accident. I was just about to take a step, the first step down a flight of stairs at work when there was a power failure. The emergency lights in the stair well did not work and I missed that step, falling down. I immediately tried to draw my arms and hands in and curl up in a ball as I bounced down the stairs. I managed to avoid breaking any bones, but didn't quite get all my fingers in quick enough to avoid damage. I ruptured the tendons going over the knuckle in both pinkies, and I ruptured the same tendon in my left ring finger and dislocated that finger as well. The dean's secretary heard the rather loud thumps of me falling down the stairs and opened the door and asked if I was all right. I told her I wasn't sure yet. I got out of the stair well and took inventory, realizing I needed to go to the emergency room after seeing my left ring finger. I asked the dean's secretary to communicate with the Chemistry Department secretary that all my classes should be canceled for the day. I drove myself to the emergency room. The first thing they asked is if I could get my wedding band off my left ring finger. It was rather obvious to anyone, that wasn't going to be possible. So they got out the little rotary manual saw they have for such occasions and cut off my wedding band. They then gave my left hand a rather large shot of novocaine and reduced the dislocation, and sent me home with some prescription strength naproxen, telling me to keep my hand elevated as much as possible. I followed all the directions, including seeing my family physician for directions of when to permanently remove the splint. But even after that I had trouble. I do a lot of typing, and am a ten finger typist. I wrote two grant proposals that particular fall, but by the end of that period, it was obvious that more needed to be done with my left hand. There were two rather wide bands of black and blue around the knuckles of my left ring finger and left pinkie. Back to the family physician again who referred me to an orthopedist in town who specialized in hands. This guy's first words to me were "You don't really need those two fingers." I told him that first I was a ten finger typist, as well as someone who played piano and guitar, and that I wasn't willing to give up any of those things. He then said, well we can send you to physical therapy, but it will be painful. At that point I just pulled up my right trouser leg and showed him the scars on my right knee and asked "Any more painful than this? I walked in here just fine." So I started physical therapy for my left hand, and did regain the mobility and dexterity. But I can't completely straighten my right and left pinkies or my left ring finger due to the missing tendon that normally goes over the top of the knuckle. So my hands aren't pretty, but they are functional, which is all I really ask. And what of the wedding band? For many years I didn't wear one, even though I wanted to wear one. I'd given the band to Valerie and she'd put it in a small jewelry/music box that I'd made her as a wedding present. She'd misplaced the box due to our moving to a different rental house, and she only recently found it. I took the band and got rid of all the sharp edges and burrs and bent the ring open and then around my left ring finger. So I'm wearing the band again, which is important to me. Why not get a new band? I recently bought Valerie a new wedding band, but perhaps I'm more sentimental. The other reason is practical. To get over that damaged knuckle the band would have to be a size 18 or 20...huge. And then when it got down to where it should be worn, that size ring would be like a hula hoop rattling around Olive Oyl. The largest non-custom rings we've been able to find are size 13. I can barely get one of those on my right ring finger. So I'll settle for this (and yes, I know that wedding bands are supposed to be perfect circles. But needs must. Besides this is the band Valerie put on my hand when we were married.)
Then Valerie started having problems. She went to see her gynecologist about some pains she was having. She ended up having an exploratory surgery to see what was wrong. The problem was severe endometriosis, which would required a full hysterectomy. Valerie's gynecologist did the surgery which Valerie recovered quickly from.
Not too long after that, Valerie was seeing a urologist for a problem with recurring bladder/kidney infections. One morning she went to urinate and her urine was full of blood. I managed to get hold of her urologist, who instructed me to get her to see him as soon as the office opened. It turned out that she had a tumor in her bladder. the urologist was able to do a trans-urethral surgery to remove the tumor. Valerie was happy just to have the procedure over. But I was still worrying, since I was waiting for the lab report. The tumor turned out to be benign, and my fears were allayed. When Valerie saw the lab report, she said she hadn't even thought about the possibility of the tumor being cancerous (something I realized, but I wasn't going to bring it up). The doctor asked if Valerie was a smoker, since that type of tumor is relatively common in smokers. Valerie has never smoked, and neither have I. But Valerie's mother and her brother John both smoked, so perhaps this was due to second-hand smoke. There is no way to tell.
During the summer of 2000, the Department Head of the Chemistry Department resigned and retired, leaving me as the Interim Department Head (I had been serving as Assistant Department Head). I did my best, trying to honor commitments that the previous Department Head had made. This led to a shortfall of $29,000 in graduate student stipends which the University had promised the department, but assumed we would never fill the positions. I still hear about that $29,000 from the administration occasionally. My only comment to them is they better not promise things that they don't have any notion of delivering. We took them at their word. By January of 2001, I was feeling awful. I'd see the doctor and they could tell there was some type of infection, but were unable to isolate what it was. They gave me all different types of antibiotics. They switched my blood pressure medicine to an ACE inhibitor, which aggravated the problem. It turns out that I'm one of those few people in which ACE inhibitors cause coughing fits...I'd get up every morning and start coughing, and usually cough until I actually vomited. I went off the ACE inhibitor. But what was wrong? I'd have cycles of nausea and vomiting approximately every two weeks. There were lots of things to consider. I'd been sent to an orthopedist, since my left foot seemed to be becoming misshapen. I was told that I had Charcot foot and I'd have to go to Houston to see a specialist. I'd never heard of Charcot foot. It turns out that it is a complication in some diabetics in which for some reason the blood flow to the foot is increased (some believe that injury is a trigger...but I saw no evidence of that). The increased blood flow actually causes the bone of the foot to start to dissolve away. The process does stop, and recalcification does occur. The foot, however, may no longer be in functional shape to walk on, and may require reconstructive surgery. So I went to Houston to see Dr. William Granberry. Meanwhile the doctors back home were attempting to understand what was happening. The medical history of relatives could be alarming: my father and mother had high blood pressure, my father heart problems (which may have been caused by the next thing) and hemachromatosis, a build up of iron in the blood; my aunt (my father's sister) had severe rheumatoid arthritis, I've had lots of muscle and skeletal injuries due to sports. All these things had to be ruled out. By the end of the spring semester of 2002, the doctors had suggested that I give up the stress of Interim Department Head and go back to the regular faculty. That was fine with me, since I was dissatisfied at what could be accomplished in that particular job. So we arranged for the next Department Head of the Chemistry Department. I was planning to teach summer school in 2002, but I became ill two days before summer school. The illness dragged on until I had to inform the new Department Head that I'd be unable to teach the two classes that I had committed to teach. I got worse, until one day, I realized I couldn't stand up. I couldn't get out of bed. It was rather late in the evening, and Valerie immediately called the paramedics and they transported me to the hospital. The emergency room staff were quick and efficient, even though it seemed like they took hours (they didn't, but every time they moved me, it hurt). I had a CAT scan from the neck down, all the way to my feet. They realized that I was septic, and immediately started cultures to identify what bacteria was causing the problem. They also determined that I had gall stones and that the gall bladder was likewise infected. But the biggest thing was that they had identified an infection in my left ankle. The infection was my old nemesis, strep. This time it was a very antibiotic resistant strain of Streptococcus A. I was wheeled into the intensive care unit. After two days I became so weak, I couldn't even lift my own arms to feed myself. They started me on vancomycin, usually considered the antibiotic of last resort. A rather delicate manipulation of the amount of fluids I could have began, since the infection had damaged my kidneys somewhat, and the vancomycin antibiotic is also hard on the kidneys. I managed to avoid going on dialysis, fortunately. After I had recovered slightly they removed my gall bladder. After that they did two operations to try and clean out the infection in my left ankle. I was a bit better. I could stand, now, but I still felt awful. After another week or so without improving, the doctors came to me with a choice: I could opt for a below-the-knee amputation of my left leg right now or take my chances on another nine months of antibiotic therapy and hope to kill the infection, and I'd have to be in the hospital that whole nine months. But if the antibiotic therapy didn't work, I'd lose the whole leg. For me the choice was easy. I could feel something happening to my left leg...and it wasn't right, plus it was moving up the leg. I had osteomyelitis, a bone infection. And this stuff was slowed, but not stopped by vancomycin. I informed the doctors and surgeon of my decision. After the amputation, the surgeon, Dr. Kober, came by and assured me that I had made the right decision, and just in time. He actually had to make the residual limb a little smaller than he had planned since the infection had moved up the leg more than they had anticipated. During all this time, even though I'd been eating as much as I could, once I could keep food down, I was losing weight. When I entered the hospital I was 240 lbs. I actually ended up at less than 170 lbs. I hadn't weighed that little since I was a junior in high school (and at that time I was 2" shorter as well). My recovery was slow. I ended up staying on the vancomycin for about six weeks. The real problem was that I had lost so much strength and muscle mass I couldn't do some of the simplest things. I couldn't open a can of soda. I couldn't twist the top off a bottle. I had trouble cutting any food that was even a bit tough. I slowly gained strength as the therapists gave me exercises to do. The rehab doctor was surprised and pleased when they finally gave me my first prosthetic leg, that I took off walking behind a walker with no problems at all. To me it was easy...it was the missing piece that I was longing for.
During all this time Valerie was always there, giving me her support. Bridget was very supportive as well, but I could tell that Briana was worried and hated to see me in that condition. She was uncomfortable coming to see me. There came a point where the people in the hospital thought I was depressed. They kept telling me that I was depressed (although I'd have to agree that any long stay in a hospital is depressing). But they didn't look at things the way I did. My outlook was that this was just another challenge to be overcome, a job. And I was doing all I could to overcome things, working hard with the rehab therapists, and learning to use my new prosthetic leg efficiently. It got to the point where they were so annoying, that I told them to go find someone who was actually depressed. They told me that I didn't laugh and didn't smile much. To tell the truth, there was little to laugh and smile about. The entire ninety days I was there, I didn't even hear one joke told. Living in a ward of patients all in for serious therapy, you aren't going to hear a lot of funny stories. I don't smile that much when I'm feeling great, so for me that wasn't unusual either. I also hated being in the hospital trying to get some sleep. I fall asleep easily, but I'm easily woken up by any noises I might hear. And hospitals are nothing if not noisy. I can truly say that I got only one good night of sleep in the hospital. That was after the gall bladder surgery, and I was in an unexpected amount of pain. They gave me a shot of morphine, which of course relieved the pain, but also put me to sleep. The only other pain medication I took the entire time I was there was after the amputation. I think I might have taken two doses of Darvocet (might as well have been sugar tablets for all the good it did as far as the pain was concerned). Usually the pain was tolerable without medication. I can put up with a great deal of pain, as long as my mind is clear and unfogged, so I actually preferred to avoid the pain meds if possible. Perhaps the most distressing thing other than being weak and learning how to use the prosthetic leg, was the lost function in my hands...the tendons in my fingers had all tightened up and I'd lost most of the dexterity in both my hands. It took a long time to regain that dexterity, and lots of therapy. After I got out of the hospital, I was talking to the rehab doctor and he told me that when patients are near death, quite often the tendons in the hands and fingers tighten up, and the hands have fingers curving in. What he didn't say, but clearly implied, was that the prognosis for such patients was usually not good. And then he admitted that the team of doctors working on my case at three different points didn't think I'd recover. I realized from the beginning when I was hospitalized how serious things were, and I knew death was a possibility. But I also knew that I wasn't ready to give up my life yet. I fought and am back with my family. I've managed to recover complete use of my left hand, while the right works but is somewhat stiff (often feeling like the joints need oiling). And of course I'm very much right-handed. But stubbornness and single-mindedness even when recovering from serious illnesses and surgeries seems to be a family trait. (My dad had both his knees replaced in his late sixties. The doctor said he'd never seen anyone recover quite so fast from a total knee replacement when the first one was replaced. The second one took a bit longer, due to some problems with infection, but that only made my dad go to the "Average" recovery time for a total knee replacement for that knee. And he approached his recovery the same way I had with my first knee operation.) There were a few strange things. It turned out I developed a case of pneumonia while in the hospital. I was getting pulmonary therapy, but was never told why. The doctors never told me or Valerie, that I'd had pneumonia until after I'd recovered from it. Their answer as to why they hadn't told either of us was simple: "You already had enough to worry about." The other good piece of advice I got from my rehab doctor, Dr. Lopez, had to do with money. He asked me if I was worried how all this was going to get paid for. I told him "Yes." He said, "That should be the least of your worries. Recover. Pay what you can. If bills become too overwhelming, bankruptcy might be your only option, but you'll survive that." I also know that on several occasions the the team of doctors working on my case opted to do things that the insurance decided they wouldn't pay for, simply because they felt if they didn't do those things, I'd have no chance at all. I'm grateful they made those decisions. So how much did that ninety day stay in the hospital cost? I don't know. Valerie has always refused to show me the bill. I do know that the cost was approaching a million dollars, but I don't know the exact amounts. Thank God insurance paid the bulk of that. But the insurance only typically pays for about 80% of the cost of tests. And they ran a lot of tests. And after being released from the hospital, there was physical therapy to attend and pay for twice a week. I actually liked doing rehab, since I had not really been in any routine training since the fall of 1975. My favorite part was training on the Universal weight machine, something I regularly did when training for track and filed. I ended up not being cleared by the rehab doctor to teach the fall semester of 2002 and was told to concentrate on my physical therapy, which I did. I was able to do that easily since I had accumulated over two years of sick leave (and by the rules of the university, technically I was only required to be on campus 22 hours per week, about a third of the time I actually usually spend on campus). I ended up using about one and three quarters months of sick leave for the semester. Things went well at the out-patient rehab, and I regained my strength. I'd get sore occasionally, especially my lower back. When I told Dr. Lopez this, he decided to immediately take an X-ray. It turns out that three of my lumbar vertebrae have fused together. I'd damaged my lower back when missing high jump and pole vault pits. The first six weeks I was in the hospital, I was rather immobile and on my back. I was not even strong enough to roll over in bed. The completion of the calcification probably occurred during that period. Dr. Lopez's comment was "I've got patients with better backs than yours on full disability!" This lead to a limitation on the amount of weight I'm supposed to lift. (A weight I actually exceed fairly often, since quite often I'm the only one in the family strong enough to lift what needs to be moved.) His next question shocked me. "Have you ever been shot?" He then showed me what he had assumed to be a shot gun pellet in my left hip. I realized at once what it was when I saw th X-ray. It was a piece of gravel from that bike accident when I was five. So that pile of gravel and sand still has its representatives within me after 49 years. I returned to teaching for the spring semester of 2003. The department was desperately hoping I would since there was not another inorganic chemist on staff, and the senior level inorganic courses are taught in the spring, required for graduating seniors.
I had to make a trip out to southern California the last week of January in 2003 since my father had suffered a mild heart attack, during which he had hit his head on the curb of the street in front of his house. He would have survived the heart attack, but the head injuries were too great. I was called late Sunday evening, managed to get to LAX on Tuesday, where my younger brother Scott picked me up. Scott had trouble recognizing me (I'd told him what I'd be wearing and that I'd be walking using an aluminum cane). The reason was that I'd shaved my beard off (now more white than dark brown), and that for some reason my curly hair was no longer anywhere near as curly as previously (effects of drugs? I don't know. But 4 1/2 years later it is a bit more curly, but not near what it used to be). My father died Wednesday. A memorial service was held on Friday. I left for Louisiana Saturday, Scott taking me to the airport again. That Saturday morning was also the morning that the space shuttle burned up reentering the atmosphere. The contrail from the shuttle was visible from Los Angeles, all through the flight to Houston. A very bad and sad week.
A few month's later, I was very unhappy to see my right foot starting to become misshapen. I had an appointment with Dr. Lopez and he immediately took X-rays (available in his office) and sent me back to Dr. Granberry for treatment of my right foot, now also a Charcot foot. I had never injured my right foot since being discharged from the hospital in 2002. It is supposed to be relatively unusual to suffer twice from Charcot foot. Dr. Granberry prescribed a protective boot, and said it would take several months for the Charcot process to finish, and then recalcification would occur. He said he'd have to make an estimate of what needed to be done after that. Those several months later, Dr. Granberry decided that reconstructive surgery would be necessary. He said he could do one other thing to help me. The Achilles tendon in my right leg had shortened so much from the illness in 2002, I couldn't put my heel on the ground, so when I walked, I was always essentially walking on tiptoe on my right foot. He said it would be an easy matter to lengthen the tendon. The surgery was scheduled for December 2003, after the end of the fall semester. The surgery went fine. I stayed three days in the hospital in Houston(two would have been more than enough). But I can't say much for the organization at the hospital. Months before I had filled out what medicines I was on. While I was in the hospital, I ended up using my own medicine that I'd brought with me, because they couldn't even come up with the insulin I needed. I took no pain medication at all. It wasn't needed. Their paper work on all that was horrible. So I was then relegated to teaching from my wheelchair, and hopping around using a walker on my prosthetic leg for six weeks. After that I was allowed slowly to be up for a limited amount of time each day, wearing a protective boot and finally to walk using a "normal" diabetic shoe. I now had a plate and five stainless steel screws aligning the bones of my right foot. The width of my right foot went from C/D to EEE, due to the plate on the inside of my right foot. Once I was allowed to walk, I recovered swiftly.
My next health problems were prompted by Hurricane Rita in 2005. Hurricane Rita headed right for our town, and we evacuated. The reason people heard much less about Hurricane Rita than Hurricane Katrina was simply because people did what they were supposed to do...they evacuated and got out of the way. Greater that 97% of the people evacuated from Calcasieu and Cameron parishes. Other parishes in southwest Louisiana had similarly high evacuation rates. And most of the remaining three percent were people who were required to stay, government officials, police, sheriffs, fire departments, etc. We went to Texarkana, AR. We ended spending three weeks there. Don't ask me my opinion about FEMA, because I don't have one good word to say about them. We were helped in Arkansas and once we got back to our home by the Red Cross. I can't say enough good about that organization. And the people of Texarkana were extremely helpful as well. But by the time we got back, things still didn't look very good around town. The house we rent, built in 1930, had survived another hurricane, with little damage. The University stayed closed for a total of five weeks, and then reopened with a modified schedule, to allow the fall semester to completed before Christmas (only a few days before, but before at least). So that was teaching more hours per week. Then the brother of one our professors was hit by a car and severely injured , in Turkey, her native country. She had to leave and make arrangements for hospitalization and therapy in Turkey. I was assigned one of her classes for the remainder of the semester. Then the week before finals, our youngest professor died of a heart attack. I ended up taking over one of his classes as well. So I was teaching six classes instead of the usual four. Quite simply I was on my feet too much, and the result was that I was having trouble with the fit of my prosthetic leg (I'm only supposed to wear it six hours or so per day). I managed to get through the semester. One evening in December my daughters insisted that I come to the dinner table for dinner. I responded that I'd rather not, since the prosthetic leg was hurting when I put it on. They said, "It's only a few steps!" So I went. I should have listened to my first instincts. Those few steps wore a significant hole in my "residual limb" (now the politically correct phrasing instead of "stump", but it's still a stump to me, since it looks like one.) So after dinner I sent one of my family to get my walker, and I hopped back to my bed in the bedroom, and bandaged the wound. Typically when this happens, it means six weeks or so in a wheelchair, before you can wear the prosthetic leg again. So the spring semester of 2006 started once again with me teaching from a wheelchair. When transferring into or out of a vehicle or bed or where ever from a wheel chair, you end up doing a lot of pivoting on your remaining foot. I developed a callus on the ball of my right foot. I didn't think much of this, until one early April evening (I was walking using the prosthetic leg again for several months by then) when I removed my sock, and the callus came with it, leaving a bloody divot on the ball of my foot. After a week of not healing well, I sought the advice of our family physician. He immediately sent me to the Wound Care Clinic in town to see a specialist in wound care, Dr. Mouton. I see Dr. Mouton every two to three weeks, but the healing process for the bottom of my foot has been painstakingly slow. They want me to walk as little as possible, so I teach from my wheelchair, and try to walk 200 paces or less per day. You have to walk some, because if you didn't you wouldn't have the strength to walk at all when the time came to walk when everything has healed up. I know my endurance is poor..I can't walk that far judging from the few times I've pushed over that 200 paces limit, and I can only stand about 10-15 minutes. Part of that is due to me wearing another protective boot, one that transfers all the weight on my right leg when I stand to the heel of my right foot. Try standing with one foot flat-footed (the only thing my prosthetic leg can do) and with all your weight on the heel of the other foot. You'll soon discover that your lower back will not like that very long. And I don't have a good lower back to begin with. So indirectly the problems with my right foot are due to Hurricane Rita. I've been in the boot and wheelchair for 15 months now. I can't wait for this thing to heal up completely. It is healing, but it is very slow. Eventually I'll have to get a custom shoe, molded to my right foot. I can't wait to get out the boot, which is very hot, being foam inside and black graphite outside (not a great color for southwest Louisiana summers).
The most recent challenge is that our younger daughter has been diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome. Asperger's Syndrome is a type of autism in which the person can have great intellect and powers of concentration, but may have difficulty in every day life, since they don't always recognize which activities are important to fit into acceptable patterns of living in society.
Those kidney problems of mine mentioned in the preface may be caused by one of the high blood pressure medicines I was taking. My medication has been modified, at least temporarily. In six weeks more tests will be done, including ultrasounds of my kidneys to see if things have improved. My diet has been modified once again, reducing my protein intake even further, to 2 oz. (60 g) per day. Not something I'm crazy about since I love meat and cheese. I now have an odd diet for a diabetic. Most of the calories come from complex carbohydrates. (I'm supposed to be on a 2000 calorie diet, but I normally eat only 1600-1700 calories (or less). Any more than that and I rapidly gain weight. A change in diet is something I can live with, though.
So health problems have become issues, but not insurmountable ones. The monetary cost of my health care did, however, require us to file for bankruptcy. (Our savings had been quickly exhausted after the first year we moved to Louisiana from over six weeks of hospitalizations. The same happened with the amount of money we managed to recoup once we sold our house in Michigan.) There was just no way to keep up with all the bills. We explored every option, but everything we came up with ended up with us having negative income of several hundred dollars every month. Bankruptcy is not something I ever wanted to do. I very definitely believe in paying my debts, all of them. We just couldn't cover all the bills anymore. We are definitely a couple who was driven to declare bankruptcy due to catastrophic illness (or if you want, a series of catastrophic illnesses.) Nothing to be proud of at all, but I've had to take a pragmatic view of things, even if I don't especially like it. So it is as if Valerie and I are starting completely over again, using careful budgeting, and we will eventually build up a good credit rating again. We are surviving. We will survive.
Now for a bit of good news. After nearly a year and a half the wound on the ball of my right foot has nearly completely healed. So I may be standing while teaching my classes for the first time in a year and a half sometime during the spring semester of 2008. I anticipate that for at least a while, I'll need to take my wheelchair with me to class until I regain enough stamina to stand and walk. I may not make it through the whole class period. The visit to the nephrologist indicated that my kidney function had improved very slightly. The upshot of all that was more adjustments to blood pressure medication. I was told that my kidney function was a bit over 60% of normal. The good news was that creatinine levels were up (not desirable) but there was no protein at all in the urine. Hopefully things wiil improve or stabilize. Things need watching, but are far from critical.
Somethings just aren't going to happen...the orthopedists wanted to replace both knees.
No orthopedist is going replace a knee on a leg of someone with a below the knee amputation on that leg. It would be possible to replace the right knee but I have been advised to not do that unless absolutely necessary. My family physician and my endocrinolgist are worried that if that operation is done, with my Charcot tendencies that I might loose my entire right leg. Fortunately neither knee has been causing me any pain recently. Hopefully it will stay that way.
A. In Sickness and in Health...
B. Money
C. Career
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