The highly advanced medical system of the greatest country in the world- so they say- apparently has no idea what's wrong with me. I just got another episode of renal colic and my fourth emergency room visit in the last two weeks.
This royally sucks.
Update: It was looking like I'd pretty much fished out this pond for sympathy so I went and dropped a hook in the ocean. The result? Kossacks care. I'm somewhat overwhelmed.
Sometimes it's a good thing to be at the undisputed top of the food chain:
Battle at Kruger (worth watching all the way through)
Found by JAM.
I get back to the normal world today. No more IV, no more pissing in a little plastic basket, no more wretched hospital food. REAL coffee!
My experience with the medical system has been mixed. I hate how you have to use emergency rooms to get any basic care in this country and the staffs rarely seem to know what they're doing besides being able to insert an IV and pump drugs into you. Even that they were'nt particularly good at. The process when I was admitted here was atrocious, leaving me in horrible pain for over an hour while the bureaucracy got me into the system before I could be treated. Mental note: always ask to be admitted directly from the E.R.
The nurses were awesome- surprisingly about half of them male. One in particular was amazing, a russian guy named Sergei from the same town as my wife. Very friendly and competent and gave me the impression he really cared about making me feel better. Almost a spiritual element to his care. Only one or two nurses seemed really indifferent. I have a lot more respect now for people who choose this vocation and give it their best.
My doctor was a wiseass but he did his job well. Jury's still out on him. I need him to follow through hard on finding out why this is happening and I'll hold his feet to the fire.
Lastly, thanks to all the sympathy fish I caught through this blog in my hour of need. Meant a lot to me to hear from you all. I can forgive the fish I missed cause some people, incredibly, don't appear to read New Worlds every day.
One last point, a special note to raison. Next time you find yourself in an awful, pain-wracked hospital room with or without a gorilla, please use this blog as a whining ground. It's great therapy.
Yeah, that was a hell of a ride. About 2600 ft. elevation gain. By comparison, my ride over Montara Mtn climbs 900 feet to the summit before descending into Pacifica. If I go all the way to the BART station, however, it's another 660' climb so I'm a little over half the BC climb. If I go both ways to and from the BART station I'm up to a total of 3120' of climbing for the day. Not really fair to compare them, though cause the BC ride was in one go, whereas the commute round trip has a 7 or 8 hour break in between.
The most impressive ride I remember was right after the cross-country bike trip, when I started at the bottom of Left Hand Canyon (5400') and biked to the Longs Peak trailhead at 9000', then hiked to the top of the peak just over 14K. That's nearly a 9K climb and I got to the top before noon. What a stud I was!
Of course Heather still does this kind of crap before breakfast.
Funny what the desire for sympathetic feedback will drive me to. After hitting refresh somewhat obsessively a few dozen times since my fishing expedition began, it occured to me that it would be the easiest thing in the world to automate. So I did, despite being loaded on Dilaudid and Toradol. All I had to do was add the following snippet of code to the header file:
<?php if (is_home()) { ?>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="300"/>
<?php } ?>
The php tags just tell it to load the meta tag if and only if you're looking at the home page. The meta tag tells the page to reload every 300 seconds, which my barely capable of basic math brain tells me is 5 minutes. This way I can keep a window (or tab) open to New Worlds and just glance at it occasionally to see if any new love is being sent my way. I might shorten the time interval a little later if no one is complaining that it causes any unexpected problems.
Another way of looking at it is this is a simple way to show that I am indeed feeling better. Not BS'ing y'all. Let me know if it appears to be blowing anything up – or is simply annoying.
Max is not well. Max has two kidney stones crawling down the twin tracts, the ureters, connecting the kidneys to the bladder. Each time one of these suckers move I get an incidence of renal colic. According to wikipedia, this is described as the "strongest pain ever felt." I have no reason to argue with that description. I am writing this from the emergency room at Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame. This is the third emergency room I've had the displeasure of visiting in the past 12 days.
I'm heavily sedated right now and will be getting more info from my doctor within the hour. My wonderful wife is being extremely supportive.
Don't need no stinking flowers, prayers, etc., just a thriving blog community. Post and make me happy.
My step daughter and I are going to LA this weekend to participate in a walk for peace .
We are hoping to see Ziggy marley or bright eyes. We are planning on doing without a car and using the metro. Any thoughts or suggestions from the collective?
In 1967, sure, Banhart would have been called a hippie. Partial to wearing dresses, the lithe Banhart goes barefoot on stage and often plays sitting on the floor. Hearing his relaxed, comfortable voice, vibing on his laid-back outlook and wonderment at nature, reminds one of the singers of the 1960s and how their music was in direct conflict with the political climate. And yet, today, Banhart feels more comfortable being known as new age. Just don't call what he does "freak folk."
whole article: Pop Matters: A Refugee From History [7 November 2005]
Powered by WordPress
