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.