Again I dress up as myself for Halloween

Rho called the other night and made a suggestion for how I could dress up for Halloween this year. I once before had dressed up as myself, and called it "Narcolepsy Man." So Rho suggested that I do something celebrating the fact that I now have a low white blood cell count. So there you have it! A Count is appropriate for Halloween, and I had the cloak for my Count routine at ACU. Here is the result. One of the close-up pictures shows my face with the white blood on it and the sign I wore so that people could know who I was. The other one shows a close-up of my feet. I could actually walk around in those shoes. Some of the kids at the trunk party at church (which gave us the opportunity to wear a costume) were utterly fascinated by my costume. You could see the wheels turning as they were sorting through why my legs were so short, and they were always pleased when they figured out that I was standing on my knees. The final picture is of both Be and me, and shows that I really was LOW, a LOW WHITE-BLOOD COUNT.

The 10 o'clock News

At 10:00 pm, Monday, October 20, 2008, I was wheeled from room 6717 at Hendricks Hospital and taken home by my wonderful wife Be. I am now in my recliner giving you a late-breaking news report of recent events.

Fortunately, Be was able to stay in my room with me this morning until Dr. Martin (my primary care physician) came in at about 9:30. He felt that my progress was good enough that I could go home after I saw Dr. Heaven, the hematologist. We needed to see the hematologist to work out when I could schedule the bone marrow biopsy, and to work out the details of how I would get the anticoagulants Coumadin and Lovenox after I left the hospital. He even indicated that I could pretty much return to normal non-strenuous activity like walking, teaching, and golf (as long as I rode in a cart) almost immediately. Unfortunately, no one informed Dr. Heaven that I was waiting for him, so I sat in the bed until about 8:20 this evening. Dr. Heaven was a bit miffed that no one informed him about his key role in my release. He went back out of the room and called Dr. Martin. After a while, Dr. Martin called me in the hospital room and asked me if the insurance company had talked to me about the fact that they were not paying for my stay any longer. Of course, they had not. The insurance company had apparently called the nurses station and informed them. I am not sure what the cut-off time was, but Dr. Martin was miffed about that development. (Are you miffed that I have already used the word "miffed" twice? The problem is that I do not know how to spell chagrined.) Dr. Martin said he would call the insurance company in the morning and have a discussion about their decision and the way they communicated it. So that is all up in the air.

Then Dr. Heaven came back and we began to plan my dismissal from the hospital, and my care regimen for the next few days. The short story is that he wrote prescriptions for Coumadin and Lovenox. I will take both for a short while and then continue the Coumadin indefinitely. I may eventually be able to stop taking it depending on the cause of my clot and possibly other factors unknown to me at this time. I am to see Dr. Heaven Wednesday morning for the bone marrow biopsy. You see, I have two conditions plaguing me at the same time. One is the blood clot and the other is a low white blood cell count that was discovered in the pre-surgery testing for my toe surgeries. Those two maladies are probably unrelated, but they are both blood issues. So Dr. Heaven is the focal point of finding the cause and determining the treatment of both.

Unfortunately, Dr. Heaven is recommending a much more conservative approach to immediate future activities. He wants only short, slow walks at first, and gradually build up. He recommends no golf for two months. Aargh! He reluctantly gave me permission to teach a class Wednesday afternoon, but wants me to sit during the class as much a possible. Since I will see him Wednesday morning, maybe he will be a bit more lenient by then. We shall see. But I have committed myself to do what the doctors say, even going with the more conservative one. Persons die from events like the one I had last Thursday.

So what is causing my problems? The clots could be from genetic disorders or as a by-product of surgery and the resultant sedentary recovery time. Both the clotting and the low white blood cell count could be from some form of cancer. I choose to accept the opinion of Dr. Heaven's associate, Dr. Aks, who came to see me Sunday night. When I mentioned leukemia to her, she shook her head and said that I looked too healthy to have that. But unknown to us, she wrote an opinion in my charts that Dr. Martin mentioned this morning. Perhaps the cause of the low white count is the medication Provigil that I take for my narcolepsy. Therefore Dr. Heaven has taken me off of it for the time being. I am going to be one droopy critter again for a while. I am going to try very hard to get much more sleep at night now. As I say that, I see that it is now 11:10 and I am still writing this report. Oh my!

I will not teach my classes tomorrow (Tuesday) and I will not teach my class Wednesday morning. I plan to teach the one Wednesday afternoon, and we will see how I feel after that.

I am going to bed now at 11:50. More to come later.

A Whiff of Mortality

The title is stolen from Garrison Keillor who said the phrase last night in the "Prairie Home Companion" show live from Moody Coliseum on the campus of Abilene Christian University. We had tickets to the show but did not get to go. Instead, Be and I listened to the show together, just the two of us, in room 6717 of Hendrick Hospital. Actually we only heard the first 1.5 hours of the show as a satellite link was lost for the last half hour of the show. NPR filled in with the last part of some former show. I may get to listen to the last part of it this afternoon on the recorded replay. Our tickets were not wasted. We were able to give them to Roberta Brown and Totsy Alderton, both of whom are members of the University Church of Christ where we attend. Totsy's husband was a former elder of the UCC who recently died suddenly of a heart attack during the night. Some of her children were in town and were going to the show so she was looking for a ticket. The fact that Totsy's husband recently died suddenly was a poignant moment for me because I thought specifically of him at 7:56 am Thursday morning. (More about that later.) We were pleased to provide tickets for these two sweet women, yet our tightwadiness showed up. We bought the cheapest tickets and apparently they were quite high up in the arena.

Becky was signed up to go to the Croptoberfest on Friday night and Saturday. She did not go. I told her that she should go because she needs to get the Pagosa Springs photo album put together. But I knew that she would not go. In fact, I knew that I would have made the same decision that she did if I were in her shoes.

I was scheduled to play golf Thursday afternoon but I did not do that. Instead I had chest X-rays, had an EKG, and listened to the blood pulse through my legs. It was during that last medical exam that I had the whiff of mortality. Because of all the missed opportunities listed above, I was planning to title this blog with "What a Revolting Development This Is" until I heard Keillor's phrase. You see, I had walked to school Thursday morning, and I had walked back to the car as we were headed to the doctor's office. I had walked into, and out of, the doctor's office. I had walked into the radiology area of the hospital, and then to the lab where the X-ray was taken. At this moment I do not remember when the EKG was done, but it was.

So I was finally on the examination table and a woman was getting up close and personal with me while examining the veins in my legs, including the upper-most veins in my legs. One leg was finished with no trouble found. In fact, I was giggling several times during the exam because the lady would turn on the sound and listen to the blood pulsing through the vein under scrutiny. It sometimes sounded like whales sound in the ocean, but then she would press lightly on my leg and the blood flow rate would increase with a sound like rrooooeeeeeEEEEEoour. You will need to hear my imitation some time. But finally the examiner's demeanor became more serious, and she said that she had found a clot. She went to get someone else to double check her finding, and also brought Be back to the examination room with her. The second person verified the results, and they said that they would call the doctor and start the procedure for me to be admitted to the hospital immediately. It had been since before 7:30 that morning that I had used the bathroom so I asked if I could go use the bathroom. "NO!" was very emphatically said. I was not allowed to get up! I could have used a plastic bottle, but my enthusiasm for using the bathroom was gone. I finally realized clearly that I almost died at 7:56 am when I had to stop walking to school because I was so out of breath. It was like I used to feel when I had just finished running the mile race in a high school track meet except that I could not recover my breathing nearly as quickly. I even had the bloody taste that I would get because I had used the deeper parts of my lungs that had not been used in a while. It was at that time Thursday morning that I thought of Jack Alderton and his heart attack. But I really did not think that I was having an attack because I felt no pain in my left arm. I just could not breath in enough oxygen.

I now know that it was foolish of me to slowly force my way on to school, but we do not have hindsight when making decisions. And I certainly did not want those students to be deprived of taking my wonderful exam that I had created for them. So I went on. And I made it. Now I have this inner feeling that my life is not worthless, nor is it to be wasted. I already had those feelings before but they are magnified somewhat now.

Please let me return to the saga of the hospital admission experience. They soon found me a room, and these two poor women tried to hoist me from the exam table to the gurney. I finally just scooted over on my on, and they seemed to appreciate it. They were also glad that I did not have lung failure in the process. I was rolled through the hospital to a room, I again scooted onto the room bed, and they told me to NOT get out of bed. Later I was scooted onto another cart and they transported me to a lung exam. I had to breath in some radiated air and hold my breath as long as I could while they took pictures of my lungs from several angles. I held my breath for almost a minute an a half. So you can see that I am not an invalid!. The pictures showed at least two pulmonary emboli in my right lung, and a larger one in my left lung. All indications are that the larger one was what caused my difficulty breathing on Thursday morning and the other two had happened before Thursday morning. It was about 4:45 when the results were coming out of the machine, and Dr. Martin (my primary care provider) was there to see the results as they were being produced. I am getting good care! Also the lab technician asked if it would be okay if he left me on the exam table for a few minutes as he wanted to quickly deliver the results to the radiologists before they left at 5:00. He came back after a few minutes pleased to report that he had been successful. When Dr. Martin saw the results he immediately called a pulmonary specialist to seek counsel. He also scheduled me to see a hemotologist. The main reason for the hemotologist is to help discover the cause of the blood clot. I will save that saga for another blog, hopefully to come soon.

At this time all I know is that I am stuck in this hospital bed until at least tomorrow. I was able to get up and slowly go into a shower in my room, sit on a chair, and with Be's help get cleaned up yesterday. More to come, and I apologize that almost all my blogs seem to be about my health issues. I always thought that I was a healthy person.

Tent Girl

Life comes at us from interesting angles sometimes.


This past Wednesday night, Be and I were eating supper with the Holmans at the Ministry Activity Center at church. Our congregation's Campus Minister/Involvement Minister came to our table with a strange look on his face. He looked at Be and me as he said, "There is a girl here with a big heavy backpack who is needing a safe place to pitch her tent for the night. She is walking across the United States, arrived in Abilene this afternoon, and the Salvation Army will not let her put her tent on their property." After a few questions, we went over to the table where she was eating to introduce ourselves to her. Her name is Cheryllynn, and she confirmed that she is trekking across the USA from New Jersey to California. We agreed to let her put her tent in our yard and use our bathroom, but made no further commitments. It was a strange feeling having someone camp in our yard when we had an empty bedroom, but it was made easier that first night because Jade was staying in the room until Lenna returned from Dallas with Justin. You see Tent Girl and her tent in the photo. Please observe that the tent has no tent fly and is not very substantial. That will be important later.

Thursday she went to the church's building and Derrick showed her around ACU, she sat in on a psychology class, and met some people. As I was walking home after my morning classes to go play golf, she happened to come out of the church office and met me. She was very apologetic, but asked if she could keep staying in her tent in our yard for several more days. Derrick had interested her in staying long enough to attend our 9:00 o'clock service Sunday night that has more than 1000 students in attendance. I readily agreed, went home and told Be, and then left to play golf. This is now Sunday night and Be plans to take her to the Flying J truck stop at Tye in the morning so she can hitch a ride to San Antonio.

Since she has been here several days we have learned a bit about her. She is 28 years old, and is divorced. As she has travelled the USA, she has walked a lot, but has also caught rides (mainly with truckers) some of the time. As I mentioned, she started in New Jersey two months ago, and eventually got to Chicago. Then she started following the old Route 66 west. When she got to Amarillo, she decided to have a look at Texas. She went to Lubbock for a few days, and then came to Abilene. We have learned that when she was deposited in Abilene, she had no clue what to do. So she started crying and praying for God to help her figure out what to do. (I will mention here that before this trip she was not a religious person. But she claims that she has become more so through the sights and adventures that she has experienced.) Quite soon an Abilene city bus pulled up. She took this to be a sign and got on. She asked the driver for suggestions regarding her plight, and he suggested that she come to the UCC for supper and some help. He even made sure that she got on the correct transfer bus, and told the new driver to let her off at the UCC.

We have continued to feel funny with her sleeping in a tent and our room empty, but she seemed to prefer that. She wanted to impose on us as little as possible. However she ate supper with us Thursday and Friday night. Saturday morning she went to garage sales with us, and then Derrick gave us tickets so that we could join him and his family at the Kiwanis Fish Fry. She had lunch with us today, then attended our small group study here and had supper with us. She went to the 9:00 o'clock as planned, and came back soaked at about 10:30 because it had started raining. When she went to her tent, it was soaked inside and out. So her stuff is now drying out in our garage, and she is staying in the bedroom tonight.

It seems that our life is never boring.