Seablogger passed away on Friday, July 9, 2010. This website will be my testament, for as long as it remains on line. Farewell, rare readers. It has been a privilege to know you.
Steve and Tim have conferred with Dr. D. this morning. He told them that there is little hope of Alan ever communicating again. Accordingly, they directed Dr. D. to discontinue “heroic measures.” Father Tom is going up to the hospital to bestow a final blessing.
A new thread has been opened. All the best for Alan.
Pineapple juice, orange juice, millk, oh milk.
All around me I hear the sound of tears and breaking resolve.
Things I would drink if allowed: pineapple juice, Orange juice, milk, milk shake, V-8. I could die t on these.
Horrible numbers, for me personally.and the road before me..
They say the second day after surgery is the worst. I can only hope that iis true. A worse day than today would be fatal.
I have been too ill to put up featured hurricane links, but NHC shows TS Alex crossing southern Yucatan as a very wet tropical storm, then across Bay of Campeche into southern Mexico. There is NO THREAT to US spill zones.
Typical visit from Doctor D. He walks in with an expression of grave astonishment, shakes my hand, and says, “I don’t know why you didn’t die.”
“Because I’m tough,” I replied spontaneously. I don’t know. Maybe it’s true. I always thought I was a pretty raggedly Leo, not lord of the veldt.
Maybe I was smart enough to manage the crisis with near starvation diet of smoothies.
Anyway, Doctor D explained the surgery more fully. There had been a perforation, and a quantity of “shit” was walled off by healing. It was toxic, though, and it needed to go. I did the right thing agreeing to the major intervention. But we don’t know where the perforation was –possibly the appendix — and Doctor W deemed it too risky to search. So it has not been treated and may recur. Meantime I have a difficult but feasible convalescence to endure.
I’m alive, surgery was uncomplicated. It was also needless. No perforation was found. Dr W was right. There was, as he suspected, nasty fluid,which he drained. There was also no sign of a current active leakage. If I can heal from this surgery,I should do well for a few months.
Color me “displeased.”
From the people who brought you the crash of 2008 — 2000 pages of financial regulation. No one knows how it would work, corrupt hack author Dodd admits. We just have to pass it and find out.
Where have I heard that argument before? During my current hospital stay I have been lectured by nurses about their licenses on no less than four occasions. One of these “professionals” had a screaming tantrum at me. Already we see Obamacare destroying the health system. Imagine what our hell-bound congressional Democrats can do for finance.
I think my doctors are arriving at consensus for an immediate intervention — attempting to drain the hypothetical abscess and install a catheter for an extended period. I have been put on no-food order again, and await a visit from the most moderate of the three.
I got this news just when I had taken care of my unpleasant business and was feeling svelte again. I have the impression that my condition is stabilizing, but maybe yesterday’s scan revealed features invisible before.
So if I drop from sight for day or two, it may simply be a result of getting sucked deeper into the system, but not anything worse.
Update: Consultation went as I feared. They want to run me into surgery this afternoon. The surgeon admits “this could turn into a disaster.” I won’t heal well, and recovery will burn more time, not to mention more physical and mental reserves. On the other hand I could get “a better baseline” for a few months, until the lymphoma worsens. Inaction means more tricky balancing until I am overwhelmed by one or both illnesses. On the other hand I would be more confident of finishing the psalms, and then I could just let go.
I always dreaded such a moment. How many straws dares one grasp? When does death by treatment become more ugly and more likely than death by disease?
How well I recall the pervasive mists of my boyhood by the New York Bight. Cool, gray, ever shifting. Now I try to work through the drug mist and keep SZ fed with psalm edits. I am hoping for Book Four today. It is super short. Then there will be one last batch.
Remember awhile back we were talking about two Cape Verde tropical waves? Their remains now dominate the central Caribbean region and appear to be merging under a large, favorable anticyclone. This is favored region for early storm development. I think something will happennow.
Stay with NHC. This bears watching. Also remember that oil slicks suppress convection and would weaken any cyclone approaching the spill zone, if such a thing should happen.
Three specialists, three highly divergent opinions and recommendations. I like the guy who says go home on antibiotics, eat a minimal diet, and hope for the best. When the surgeon advises against intervention, I listen.
In the morning I shall learn the outcome of their afternoon conference today, when the three had yet another scan in hand. But I have made up my mind to go home on Monday, barring some persuasive new interpretation.
W is for Weather. Lots of it around right now. Record heat and storms in the East; record chill will follow, with heat in the Plains for first time this year. Don’t worry, yet. But you have my permission to fret.
S is for Steve who has helped me get clean and comfortable after some rough days. I had not taken a shower since last Saturday. and after severely wrenching my back this morning while trying to straighten my bed, Now I have a whole new world of pain and incapacity. I could not have bathed without Steve’s help. Thank you.
O is for Over. The long anticipated Obama courtroom drama has begun; the Afghan war is turning into a fiasco; the Gulf oil spill goes on, amid such charming spectacle as Feds shutting down the state effort to protect coastline, for want of proper paperwork. O will never be the same.
Now let’s rant or pray, according to our nature.
The psalms have priority.
Medical news is grim. Perforation and probable abscess. This is not fixable. I will be going home to hospice.
Addendum: This is not intended to be a closure announcement. I will post once or twice a day unless simply too ill. If I finish that final editorial work, I might increase the posting.I have 17 more psalms to edit but they look fairly easy.
I have pulled the stomach tube. Because the doctors disagree, and because I was beginning to experience new and horrid pain. I interpret it as a cry of stomach — too much suction for too long, and nothing left to suck. What I need now is sustenance. Doctor D refuses. He wants a nutrition tube in my neck. If I agree to that I will die here, being allowed no other sustenance for fear I will die of eating.
If there is a perforation crisis, it would have killed me long since — for it is generally agreed that something bad happened five weeks ago Friday, and the time of my previous admission. This is an ongoing problem, probably home manageable, according to the old GI surgeon, Doctor W. I want to go with his advice on this. Increasingly I begin to think this episode may cause me a serious breach with Doctor D, which would be regrettable after so long.
The dispute between Obama and military leaders was bound to come. America cannot be ruled by a transnationalist. This is the start of dangerous tensions.
How real is Jesus to me? Somewhere between the most compelling character in a great book, and a person in the room with me. That, of course, is not enough. I pray, I am calm, not beset — at least not yet — with some final tremens, but faith? I pray with Augustine. “I believe, Lord, help me in my unbelief.”
Bailouts and rumors of bailouts vex the world. How much longer can it go on?
Got anything to say on Eyja or other volcanoes? Or the freakish behavior of the sun? Let’s hear about it. Instead of a quirky news provider, I am becoming a news gatherer.
They’ve got my body, and half my soul.I so fear I’m going to die in this place. The stomch pump is a most miserable thing. The Doctor D is big on it. The abdominal guy just came past and told me it’s a pointless misery.
There has been dispute over interpretation of scans. The blind men are inspecting the elephant, Radiologist is sure I perforated; Doctor D isees no sign of major advance or penetration by lymphoma; the abdominal surgeon does not see symptoms consistent with perforation.
The latter is calling the shots now, for this is bowel disease, not cancer, though it is precipitated by cancer. He is conservative in this ambiguous case — otherwise he would have driven me out the door to die.
First order of business:clear the crap, literally. Yesterday an enema, no more successful than my home remedy versions, then onto the pump.I’ll be stuck with it all day today, as we did. My distention is improving markedly. Nothing alarming is happening. I was able to sleep. Antibiotics are suppressing any potential infection. I suspect another crap-free scan will be ordered today. Then we will decide on a course non invasive treatment.
Curiously my body had been wanting a serious fast, and is not having a problem with it.
I will be 24 hours on stomach pump, and sedated. I will probably not be able to post. If I can, I will put up an open thread and a small update late today.
Still forbidden food. This is maddening. Hopefully it will be resolved soon, if the additional test results come through more favorably.
Meanwhile I must work with psalms, but I will have less to post. Drafts will have to stand unless Seree highlights them. I am just making metrical tweaks and footnoting. No time for more mundane posts now.
Small tornadoes are common on the high plains near the Rockies, but big ones rare. The Rimrock of Billings is a commercial northeast of the old town, which lies in a wide, shallow valley. I can imagine what a fine target it must have made.
Expect more severe weather in the high plains for as long as the polar jet remains active there. If there is any climate connection, it is cooling.
I met a remarkable physician this evening. He was the surgeon whom Doctor D had summoned. He saw the O’Brian book by my bed, which caused us to talk more about literature than my innards. But he did indicate that he and a colleague regarded my scan as ambiguous. There is air in my abdominal cavity, but no peritonitis — a fatal condition. So what’s really going on? Tests, more tests.
Doctor D really can be a drama queen. I know some of you think I am the dramatizer, but I get more inspiration than you know. He had me ready to close the blog and go home to die in a matter of days.
Barack Obama made reference to “two-father families” in his Father’s Day proclamation. This is certainly a unique moment in the history of a minor secular holiday.
As it happens, Steve and I were talking the other day about an ABC self-promotional campaign that featured the slogan “a new kind of family.” Of course it was a code term, and a declaration of cultural war against heartland America by another formerly another “American” institution. The rainbows and genderbends of the celebrants made clear what the words blurred. Conservatives are deemed too dim to understand such things.
The subject arose because Steve knows a two-father family. Two guys together six or seven years, also business partners. They own a nice, viable house in Hollywood — they did not overextend themselves in the boom, so the bust has not troubled them. Things seem stable. One of them used to date women in college and afterward. Recently one of Jeff’s exes got herself in a spot of trouble. To her credit she sought alternatives to abortion. She found the answer in her old friend. She bore the child a few months ago. She and the biological father signed away all rights. Jeff is the legal father of the child; his partner, the legal guardian.
Steve has visited the household several times of late. The “parents” aren’t getting out much. No one is expressing regrets — yet — but this is more serious commitment than a puppy, or even eight puppies. I was happy to raise “a new kind of family” in North Dakota, long before the slogan. But now all this seems much more troubling. What will become of the gay partners, the child, and the birth parents who so casually cast off life’s ultimate obligation? And what will become of the country that elected Barack Obama?
Happy Father’s Day.
It was a pretty day again here, but the cumulonimbi kept boiling offshore. At midnight they gathered up and yielded a four-hour siege of rain and thunder. Dawn skies still look unsettled.
Meanwhile the tropical trouble far at sea is no longer far. It has been pelting Puerto Rico. I see no mention in US media but there is risk of heavy rainfall at Port Au Prince.
South Florida could also see effects next week. Nothing too dramatic, but the warnings should be heeded.
“Now, the president may believe that it’s worthwhile to sacrifice your prosperity on a moral imperative. But let’s not obscure what we’re talking about here.”
Tiger Woods really has destroyed himself.The game is going downhill. I posted on Tiger’s troubles a few times, and I expected things to go badly for him. All image, no substance.
Perhaps the handlers could have saved him with a 180 degree image shift. Jettison the family values. Bring out the bad boy. But no. They bludgeoned him into “recovery.” And those whiny cringing press appearances. Pitiful.
Update: Woods had played well today, and then he caught a lucky puff of Pacific wind that pushed his tree-clearing shot onto the 18th green. In golf the luck seems to come as a reward. But he needs wins, or the remaining endorsements will fade away.
Traitor. Rand had a terrible gift for attracting — or creating — her betrayers.
Meanwhile, US equity markets are quieter. The Eurocan has rolled further than reader JamesD surmised. I’m going with Mr Laffer. The crunch comes next year, not this.
“Wort” is a clinging vine. “Worrywort” is a metaphor, as well as a kenning (combination of two nouns). In South Florida we all have reason to be worryworts right now. Take a look at the ocean heat potential. The deepest layer of warm water is piled in the western Caribbean, as usual, but the warmest waters of all lie around the Bahamas.
There was an explosion of thunderstorms a few miles offshore last night. Lots of lightning. And every time I look out to sea, I am seeing a summer sky subtly different from those I have seen before. A cyclone sky.
I moved all the rest of my old CD’s into my room yesterday. Initially I had only moved the classical music for loading into the 5-disc changer. Now I have oddball remnants of rock — all Midnight Oil’s early albums for example. And I have the sailing music — Boys of the Lough, brought ashore from the last boat. I had not heard any of this music in years. Maybe Tim M will comment on his zany encounter with Boys of the Lough. They became an inspiration for sailing — their music was ever present when we were at sea.
Timing is everything in a complex drug regimen. This morning I was so feverish I never made it to the pillbox. So my disastrous day was another prednisone crash, though the B symptoms and the pain are also getting worse. When I rousted Steve to make me a smoothie, he noticed the pillbox had not been tapped this morning.
