ProfessorTomoe

I took it for my Chronic Pain Syndrome many years ago. It made me gain 30 pounds. I tell that story to any doctor who asks if I've had it, and they move on to the next medicine on their list.

Yes. I've been dealing with elevated white blood cell counts for at least a couple of years now. My primary doctor has me going to a hematologist for monitoring. You might remember the scare last year or so when he thought he saw something other than an elevated neutrophil count? Scared the crap out of me until he ruled it out as a "glitch" in the test. No fun. I was rather well cushioned on the O.R. table, and I was only in there for 15 minutes, so they would have had to have worked fast to bang up my leg to the stage it's at. Again, I'm marking it down to a prolonged bout of severe stress due to extreme pain and leaving it at that. I don't really want to know anything more about it. As for now, I'm more worried about digesting the cheddar-cauliflower soup I ate for late lunch. Don't think it went down quite right. Urgh. I don't want to take another Zofran just for a bowl of soup. One thing I haven't mentioned through all of this has been the mental stress. There's been mental stress. A lot. Like, a whole smegging lot, at every single turn. I think that covers the mental stress.

Oh, bop do do do do do do do do Fa-fa-fa-fa-fashion

Well, I'm back to where I was before the whole nightmare started, medically. My "drug cocktail" is doing the job it was for my spinal nerve pain. I'm still waiting for the lumbar caudal epidural steroid injection to take effect, which should happen some time Friday or Saturday if the doctor was right. I'm told it may cause a flare in soreness in the injection site before it provides pain relief, so that's something to (not) look forward to. At least it'll be a signal of impending relief, for however long the shot lasts. The bruising down my right leg is still there. It looks more like varicose veins than anything else. Mrs. Prof (who is away at work right now, so I'm being extra super careful making my way around the house) is more worried about them than I am. She thinks I may have developed a DVT, or deep vein thrombosis, but what she doesn't understand is that those develop deep within your legs—not on top, where you can see them. It's probably just some stress bruising. Speaking of stress, I got to see my pre-op lab results. My blood work showed a couple of interesting items. My white blood cell count is high again, but this time in both the neutrophils and the monocytes. I was also running a 99.0°F fever yesterday (my normal is 97.6°F), possibly stress induced, but the monocyte count might explain it as well. I also had some enlarged red blood cells, for whatever good that'll do you. I have no clue there. Moving on to my foot, I haven't seen the CT scan report, so I have no idea what the podiatrist is actually going to do. I know he's going to screw at least one fracture closed and wire another shut, but from me looking at the CT scan disc, he's got a couple of other things that need fixing, like one of my sesamoid bones (which looks cracked clean in two). I saw his preliminary report from his X-rays where he mentioned this as a possibility, but it wasn't on the immediate list of things to fix. I'll want to know before he goes in and starts screwing around. Bureaucracy-wise, I'm finally scheduled for the foot surgery on Friday, with all paperwork supposedly taken care of while I was in pre-op on Tuesday. I'm just waiting for the podiatrist's office to give me an absolute confirmation of what time I need to check in: will it be 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m.? I've spoken with the nurse already today. She said she would call me back this afternoon. I'm not holding my breath.

Yurgh. We get our slightly crappish weather early this morning, if it holds together. More waves are predicted for the rest of the week.

Okay, more updates. The hospital didn't have my pre-op orders for my Friday surgery when we got there at 11am. They went ahead and checked us in for the 2:45 p.m. spine injection, though. After many stops and false starts, including a red herring that made me think I'd have to come back Wednesday for pre-op, everybody finally got their act together. I got the pre-op done around noon. Worst part: my pain level. I woke up hurting in the 9.0 range. It spiked near 10 while I was going through all of the check-in and pre-op waiting. They couldn't give me anything until they got me back and got an IV started. That didn't happen until somewhere around 12:45 p.m. Only then were they able to give me two fentanyl shots. Neither of them did any good whatsoever. I sat in the bed, writhing in pain, until the doctor and the anesthesiologist showed up at about 3 p.m. (late). Both were surprised that the fentanyl didn't work. They promised relief, albeit not immediate, from the steroid epidural. I was wheeled back, rolled over, and given general anesthesia for the epidural. Next thing I knew, I was back in the same room with Mrs. Prof. With the same pain. More writhing and groaning ensued. It was as if I'd never even gone through the procedure. At one point, I told Mrs. Prof that I was ready for them to just amputate the leg from the nerve level and be done with it. I couldn't stand it anymore. She calmed me down, with some difficulty. The nurse in charge of me watched over me for a while, asked me questions about my pain relief regimen at home, and brought up fentanyl again. She got the full story on that, after which she got permission to get synthetic morphine (dilaudid, a.k.a. hydromorphone) for me. She administered four or five shots, I forget how many, and I have no idea how much. They made me groggy and tired, but did nothing for my nerve pain. I got a "some drugs don't work on nerve pain for some people" talk from the nurse. The anesthesiologist even checked in on me and got an earful of groaning and agonized yelps. He was quite surprised. They finally made the decision to let me go home and take my normal "drug cocktail," as the nurse put it, after giving me a 30-minute period to shake off the dilaudid. Surprisingly, moving around, getting dressed, and getting back into the Ridgeline helped lower the pain level down below an 8 for the first time all day. One side note: Mrs. Prof noticed an unusual bruising along my right shin as I was getting dressed to leave. It was quite pronounced, and was definitely not there when I got to the hospital that morning (all I had was a bruise around my knee from the fall). A nurse who was in the procedure room was called in to "lay eyes on" the leg, I guess to witness it in case it causes problems or gets worse. Back to the story. I managed to use my walker to get back into the house and get seated to send the previous update. A brief bathroom break ensued, followed by Mrs. Prof having to reapply my gauze bandage (that's how low the shot was—it went down the toilet, unintentionally, and had to be replaced). During that time, either the lidocaine from the injection or the dilaudid has taken a stronger hold on my nerve pain. It's improved as more time has passed, allowing me to eat something, take my medications (including hydrocodone and Topamax, which have also helped), and get seated to type this second update. I'm considerably more comfortable now, albeit still very groggy from the dilaudid. (Lots of spelling corrections going on while typing this up.) Mrs. Prof has since gone to the grocery store for cranberry and orange juices and to meet a cat person for some brief business. So, what does the future hold? Well, tomorrow and Thursday, I'm still supposed to take it easy on the tailbone. However, I've got to call the podiatrist's office and get them to get their act together on the CT scan report so I can sign and e-mail back whatever form they need prior to the surgery on Friday. I've also got to get a firm check-in time for the surgery—the 5am time right now is not set in stone, according to the hospital. I swear, this has been a ballet of errors on a grand scale that has made me want to drop the whole thing and reschedule the foot surgery until next week. Only Mrs. Prof's stubbornness has kept it on track. Right now, though, I'm going to hobble into the kitchen with the cane, get another glass of tea, hopefully make it back without falling again, and try to drink some of it without nodding off in mid-drink. No guarantees beyond that.

5:44 p.m. CDT 20170516. I'm home from a medical nightmare come to life. I'm too out of it to go into all of the details, but suffice it to say: I hate paperwork, especially when it's screwed up and not sent on time. I was in a constant state of pain between 8.0 and 10.0 all day long, including after the procedure. Dilaudid (hydromorphone) doesn't do jack for nerve pain. I'm going to have to go through a reduced version of this on Friday, where (I hope) the post-op pain medication actually does some good. More news later.

9:12 a.m. CDT 20170516. I'm up, but I'm not at the hospital yet. My last hydrocodone dose was at 10pm last night. I'd forgotten how much relief it was providing. I HURT EVERYWHERE. I'm awake mainly because I hurt too much to keep sleeping, especially on my right side (where the spinal nerve issue is). Walking to the bathroom was a new experience, with both my spine pain and my broken foot pain working with nothing to numb either. Not to mention my knees, which still hurt from the fall and which have never beer properly examined. I'm a mess right now, and I'm going to be that way for at least the next six hours.

Thank you again to whomever is jumping on the various items on the wish list! We're both honored, and I've made sure to let Mrs. Prof know that she needs to hop on and give you all a proper thank you herself. I've also asked her to give a post lumbar caudal injection update when we get home from the hospital tomorrow. Tomorrow will be particularly difficult. Nothing by mouth after midnight until after the pre-op and the lumbar injection at 2:45 p.m. CDT. I'm going to be as thirsty as a Longhorn after a hot day on a dusty trail drive. Right now, I'm waiting for my last pain pill of the night to kick in so I can take a shower and crash out completely. I hope I can sleep through most of the morning—my pre-op for my Friday foot operation is set for 11am, and I don't want to sit around here waiting while I watch Mrs. Prof eat and drink.

bjfnord@yahoo.com

Mrs. Prof was made aware of this, but the compatibility chart only listed SanDisk up to 8GB. She choose a Kingston 32GB, which is the only tested compatible 32GB card. (I don't know what the veracity of said test chart really is, but she figured better safe than potentially not covered by warranty.)

Mrs. Prof has populated her Wish List with the necessary memory card. She also wants me to pass along a message that you are spoiling her.

I asked her, and her eyes glazed over. She's decidedly low-tech. However, just now she got up and got her documentation to figure things out. I told her she's going to have to add what she needs to her wish list. She said she will, but I get the feeling she doesn't want to take advantage of all of you (Texan pronunciation: y'all) too much. One too many very appreciative trips to the well, that sort of thing. I'm overwhelmed by all of this. I don't know what to say anymore.

She said it didn't come with one, and she would very much appreciate it if someone sent one her way. She's still quite stunned over what she received, as am I.

Mrs. Prof has received her present from her Amazon Wish List, and she is ecstatic! "Thank you thank you thank you!" is a direct quote from her. "Now I've got to learn how to use it and play with it" is another. I think she appreciates the gift. As do I. Thank you!

Said the bowling ball to the tenpins. I checked in with the podiatrist's nurse about the CT scan disc as to whether or not he wanted it. Turns out he doesn't. Instead, he wants the report from someone trained in reading CT scans, but hasn't received that yet (probably since it was done by a skeleton crew (pun intended) on a Saturday). Once he gets it, his nurse will e-mail something to me, which I've got to fill out, sign, scan back in to PDF format, and e-mail back today. Nuisance. Nuisance - an inconvenience or annoyance. I wonder how that word got related to puissance, in the meaning of great power, influence, or prowess. They sort of look like antonyms, but not really. What's the relation, and what's the root language for them?

5:36 a.m. CDT 20170515. The anxiety-ridden waiting period begins, and I've got a head start. The only anti-anxiety medicine I can have is Ativan (lorazepam), and then only 0.5 mg per dose 4x a day. It's not doing its job at the moment. I keep thinking about being without any water and without any pain relief medicine from midnight tomorrow through the foot pre-op testing at 11:00 a.m. CDT until sometime after the lumbar caudal injection at 2:45 p.m. CDT. If the epidural injection procedure is anything like the last one I had, I won't even be put under—just sedated, a bit beyond mildly. Mrs. Prof is definitely bringing my hydrocodone with her so that I can take it once I'm out of the hospital, if they don't give me any pain relief after the procedure. So what's there to be anxious about? [insert anxious laugh here] I'm still trying to coordinate things for Friday's foot operation. I think there's something that the nurse is supposed to e-mail to me that I'm supposed to fill out, sign, then scan and e-mail back. I'm going to have to call about that today. Had a slight medical not-too-niceness last night in conjunction with Mother's Day dinner. My son came over and made something I taught him to cook—"Full-Plate Nachos," we call it. Spiced queso dip with taco meat. He did a terrific job of it, too, but idiot that I am, I ate too much. Enough to give me what post-bariatric surgery patients call "dumping syndrome." I get it when I eat too much uncooked dairy sometimes, and he used milk to thin out the melted cheese (it's part of the recipe). I had another quotation mark syndrome—a "Zofran emergency." Zofran is an anti-nausea medicine, and I needed it a few minutes after finishing what I could eat of my serving. Another anxiety-inducing moment, since I get nausea very easily in conjunction with hospital procedures. Even getting an IV administered can make me sick to my stomach. Hell, just typing about it is making me feel off my feed. What started off as a therapeutic post is turning into something that's making the situation worse. I'm going to have to wrap it up now. Make it stop. Please, make it stop.

I do, too. I wish there were some way I could post the images from the CT scan, but I don't have the software to convert it to something suitable for YouTube. From what I could see, there's only one or two complete dislocation fractures, but they haven't moved too far out of position. The nasty stuff is the way some of the bone split.

My wife handed me the CD containing the CT scan of my foot from yesterday. I was able to find several breaks, but not all of the ones the podiatrist pointed out. However, I found one that he wasn't sure was a break. It's in one of the small, round bones below the second bone of the big toe, called a sesamoid bone. He said it would be extremely unusual if it were fractured—more likely, there was an injury to the surrounding tissue. If I read the CT scan correctly, the left sesamoid bone is broken clean in two. Yikes. He's going to have hell fixing things Friday.

4:39 a.m. CDT 20170514. Shower taken and CT scan done without problems. The one bit we did think would run smoothly turned out to be a real beech. That bit? Getting my hydrocodone refilled. Quick refresher: I'd had my hydrocodone issued on April 18th. I'd taken 3x-a-day through May 2nd, with the exception of a 4th pill by doctor's orders on April 30th. On May 3rd, I was switched from 3x-a-day to 4x-a-day and given a new paper prescription, to be filled on May 13th. Well, we went to our CVS on that date (yesterday) on the way to the CT scan and tried to get it filled. No dice. They said the earliest I could get it filled was Monday the 15th. I would have run out after one dose on the 14th. Unacceptable to Mrs. Prof. However, I had to be at the CT scan appointment. We told them to check with the insurance again and that we'd be back. Well, we returned, and still no dice. Mrs. Prof decided to take them on. She dialed up the insurance company, who had no problem with the deal. CVS said it wasn't the insurance, it was state regulations and some arcane math involving how many days prior to when I'd run out that I was allowed to refill. She was fighting a losing battle. The pharmacist told her she could always go to another pharmacy and see if they'd fill it (always a bad sign). She finally came back over to me in the waiting area, where I told her to gather her stuff so that we could just go home. I won't go into the details of what followed, other than to say her interpretation of the situation and mine were different in some areas. Go figure. I was exhausted and fell asleep. Next thing I knew, the phone rang. She was at another pharmacy, getting the prescription filled, and would be home soon. When she got home, she handed me my prescription along with a sheet of paper showing how many pills I was supposed to have taken. She came up with me running out on the 13th. According to her, she contacted the other pharmacist, explained the situation, explained her math, and got nothing but agreement from the pharmacist. That's what prompted her to go to the other pharmacy, (I just hope there were no provisions in the pain management forms I filled out about being forced to stick with one pharmacy). I hate pharmacies. The worst are pure bureaucracy, with no real caring for their customers. Just fill what gets faxed, transmitted, or handed over, interpret it as an X number of days prescription no matter what, and do not flex from that calculation, especially if the medicine involved is a controlled substance. No listening to customer pleas allowed. No medical plans for today or Monday, other than to make sure I don't take any of the pills on my pre-lumbar caudal injection "stop list." I can take a couple of days' rest. Then things really get busy on Tuesday. Dear Lord, do they get busy.

Wow! She's going to be so excited when it gets here. (I made sure to have her keep "spoilers" turned off. ). Thank you! I'll make sure she gets the approval as well. In other news, we're about to try and figure out how to get me in and out of this moon boot so that I can take a shower, along with how I can use the shower stool with my knees all banged up and with me having trouble standing. Got to be at the imaging place for the CT scan by 1:15 p.m., and it's currently 11:32 a.m. CDT. It'll be about a 45 minute drive, including time to drop off a prescription for more pain medication.

It took some doing (she was still assimilating her morning coffee—it was like pulling tigers' teeth trying to walk her through the process), but the problem has been fixed. Also note that she should have only one wish list now, where she did have two. Despite the above snark, she is very grateful, as am I for her. She deserves something for being my involuntary chauffeur/cook/maid/everything else during this ordeal. Our thanks go out in advance!

I'll get her to get on to that once she gets up. I'm on my weird sleep schedule again—it's 3:45 a.m. CDT here, and I'm waiting for pain medicine time. Mrs. Prof won't be getting up for several hours yet, and even then it'll take a while before her coffee kicks in to where she can figure out the setting (I wasn't even aware of it!). Thank you again!

I don't believe it, but talking Mrs. Prof into putting a few things on her Amazon wishlist wasn't so difficult. I don't know exactly what she's got online, but she'd be very grateful for anything you'd care to send. Her Amazon account is at bjfnord@yahoo.com . Let me know if you have any trouble accessing it. Thank you very much, from both of us.

She doesn't have anything at ThinkGeek, and for that matter she doesn't have anything set up on her Amazon wishlist. I've told her to put something up there, but I'm going to have to goad her into doing it. Hang on, we're working on it.