ProfessorTomoe

Mrs. Prof received the memory card today for use with the field camera. She's already put it out and brought it back in a couple of hours after feral colony feeding time (and past sunset). She is giddy with delight over the results. Seriously, she's been going through the still shots (hasn't used the video mode yet) and has been laughing at some of what she's got. She's also identified a couple of new ferals who haven't been through T-N-R yet. Looks like she's got some more trapping to do. Thank you for making this possible!

Can you picture me hobbling around with a pink bamboo umbrella sticking out of my big toe?

5:18 p.m. CDT 20170518. An interesting confluence of date and time. It looks like what little sleep I may get tonight may be interrupted by severe storms. I hope they stay away (or stay mild enough) long enough for me to get in a shower tonight and to get to the hospital tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m. CDT. I think I'm going to delay my last hydrocodone dose from 10pm to 11pm tonight. As I've said, the last thing I want is a repeat of the spinal nerve pain from Tuesday. I'm hoping I can avoid that by delaying the hydrocodone, but not so late that it interferes with my anesthesia. This will also mean I'll delay the rest of my "drug cocktail" until 11pm. I can handle a one-hour delay on the forward side better than a long delay on the back end of the procedure. Mrs. Prof had some less-than-kind opinions about the podiatrist earlier today. Granted, he did keep us waiting almost two hours in the exam room, but once he did show up, we had his undivided attention. His nurse has missed a couple of call-back requests, but today when I called to find out about the hospital show-up time and ask about the bones the doctor would be operating on, she transferred me to him and immediately called the hospital while he explained the procedure. Additionally, before he let me go, he waited for her to get the arrival time from the hospital and then gave it to me once she got it. Her opinion wavered a bit after taking all of this into account. I agree with her current perception of him—I'm not 100% sure what to make of him and his nurse (who, if I'm correct, is also his wife). Right now, Mrs. Prof is out picking up a T-N-R cat and transporting it somewhere. I don't remember her exact itinerary. She's handling things calmly for now, although I think there's an underlying dread in her of me going into another nerve pain flare before and/or after the operation. For her sake, I hope it doesn't happen. (Hell, for my sake as well.) I'm on my anti-anxiety and antidepressant meds this time, but I still might post again later tonight if something sets my brain running into overdrive. Please forgive me if I do, and thank you for putting up with it.

I am so grateful. Let me know if there is anything I can do in the future to return the favor from you and anyone else who jumps in. Thank you, all.

As always, I thank you all. And, for once, I'm going to go back and change my mind on something. I do have a few long-standing cheap items on my Amazon wish list that, if anyone would be so kind, would provide tremendous relief beyond what medicines can offer. I feel embarrassed to even ask, but with two surgeries in one week, I am getting a little desperate. So, if no one would mind: ljfnord@yahoo.com Let me know if my visibility settings are correct. Thank you to anyone who even considers this.

9:12 a.m. CDT 20170518. Got to talk to both the nurse and the doctor over the phone. The doctor is still doing an ORIF on one of the joints of my big toe and apparently putting in a screw, but that's going to be about it from the sound of things. The fractured sesamoid bone can't be operated on—only immobilized until it heals on its own. That means I'm going to be wearing the moon boot for several weeks after the surgery. I asked the doctor for a post-op report. He agreed with no reservations. I also got a firm time to show up at the hospital: 5:30 a.m., with surgery scheduled for 7am. That means getting up around 4:30 a.m. to brush my teeth. I'm going to be wishing I had coffee in addition to hydrocodone tomorrow morning.

8:44 a.m. CDT 20170518. Less than 24 hours until the operation on my broken foot. I know they're doing an ORIF (Open Reduction - Internal Fixation) with screw(s) and wire(s), but since I haven't seen the report on the CT scan, I don't know exactly what bones they'll be fixing. I hope they'll be doing something to one of my sesamoid bones in the ball of my foot, since it looked particularly nasty on the CT disc and hurt a lot when the doctor put pressure on it. I don't have a firm time as to when I'm supposed to be at the hospital—still. I was supposed to get that info yesterday from the nurse, but I think you know how that went. I'm getting that info today, come hell or high water. Their office opens up at 9am, so I'm going to hit the phones ASAP. The one thing that really, REALLY scares me is that my steroid shot won't have kicked in yet and my spinal nerve will flare again. I can't stand to go through that kind of pain again, and Mrs. Prof said she can't stand to watch me go through it again. My time without hydrocodone will be significantly less, though—from 10pm to 7am, instead of 10pm until 3pm. A secondary concern is whether or not they will lay me flat on my back. I've still got my coughing problem, but only when I'm horizontal on my back. What'll happen if they put me under and put me down flat? I fear choking on my sinus drainage or reflux or whatever the hell it is that's causing the problem. A long talk with the anesthesiologist is going to be necessary.

OH DEAR GOD THEY'RE ON TO ME HIDE THE FILES FORGET THAT VAPORIZE THE FILES AND FIRE UP THE JX-63 POD NOW!!!

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.