If It Is Tuesday...

Cape May During Hurricane Sandy

If it's Tuesday, then Monday must be over.

Anyone wishing to argue about space and time continua or parallel string bikinis may simply go take a dip in the moat.

Because, damn it, Monday is over.  We start fresh.  All devices have been charged.  The Manor is pristine, the grounds are pruned, raked, and -- where absolutely necessary -- mowed.  Sven Feingold putters about giggling, so something is up with the latest ManorFest Maze design.  La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore stays on her cell, when she can get reception, because she is *this* close to garnering a position as spokesperson for a major weight loss company that specializes in busty divas.  Just the exercise and muscle toning from running up and down turret stairs and sprinting around Captain Haddock's miniature submarine wormhole gateway will make her lose a few dozen dress sizes.  Should Marlinspike Hall ever successfully be enveloped in a wifi bubble, the Milanese Nightingale may well gain back all the fat she's discarded chasing a phone signal.

Our various herds and fruit orchards are all in their proper states.  The monks next door are reworking their Christmas Catalog of Wasted Calories and the Abbot, Fred, and I have been designated taste-testers.  Life is sweet.

But Monday.

The Mother-Unit that actually raised moi decided to need emergency surgery.  In a test of the emergency surgery system in the coastal backwaters of her slice of paradise, she encountered the requisite number of idiots at the local beach bum hospital over the weekend.  So, in a way, Monday was her salvation, as it brought an influx of actual medical practitioners leaking grains of sand onto the spit-shined checkerboard hallowed hospital halls.

I was a tad bit worried when I looked up her surgeon's credentials to find that he also enjoyed the practice of ophthalmology.

I've not seen her in decades but every description begins with her diminutive stature.  She has everyone and everyone's brother worried about her weight -- no busty diva, she.  I want to scream sometimes.

Oh, about what?  I need to particularize my need?

I want to scream at the "but she's so tiny," "she can't take it, she has no... reserves!"

Puh-leeze.  This is a woman who was a fierce ballerina.  I watched her employ many tricks of the dancing trade as she guarded her lithe status through the years -- as if it mattered once she was no longer expected to enter rooms via a grand jeté.  She is not anorexic in the strict definition of the malady.  Nor is she an alcoholic, nor does she abuse prescription drugs, in spite of a lifelong celebration of Happy Hours and a honking bottle of bazillions of phenobarbital kept in the last drawer of her dressing table.

Anyway, she survived the weekend, and made it through a scary surgery with style.  And got -- with us -- to Tuesday!  Yay, Mom!  Point your toes and twirl, twirl, twirl!

Equally wonderful about this day?  Grader Boob gets his first doses of chemotherapy!  His story has become so sad, beset with that ogre of physical pain and the great deceivers of the mind that pain welcomes. If you're a Dedicated Reader, you've seen me act out that drama, o'er and o'er.  Therefore, rejoice in Tuesday, for shrinking those tumors will result in less pain, and less pain will allow sleep, and sleep will further decimate the pain cycle.

All together now:  "Shrink, tumors, shrink!  Shrink, tumors, shrink! Shrink, tumors, shrink!" I have an accompanying tune in mind, but don't want to limit your creativity as you dance your way through this Tuesday, chanting, cavorting, and casting Grader Boob tumor cells into Tumor Cell Inferno.

Use any musical genre that works.  Though I have to admit that "country/western" somehow doesn't fly. Feel free to prove me wrong. Something in a Texas Two-Step, maybe?  Just be stylish.  This is my brother we are talking about.

He's simply riddled with cancer, the reprobate.  His new oncologist, who seems a very good dood, is starting the meds today whether he is admitted to the clinical trial or not.  And no, I am not stupid.  Prevailing winds, insight, what is not said -- I'm on it.

Given that it's been over 6 weeks since the official diagnosis, it is fair to say that the new oncologist's very life may have hinged on that decision, as I was gathering weaponry to bring down on his toupéed head if something were not done this week.

Would I kill to improve Grader Boob's Quality of Life?  Let me see.  Hmm. Yes, of course I would.

Wouldn't you?  If I were willing to personally extrajudicially execute Pinochet, Jesse Helms, and various other errors, an attempt on the life of someone impeding the life of Grader Boob is one of those famed "slam dunk" decisions. The weird problem with my Kill List, and this has been the case since roughly the 1970s, is that once penciled in for an extrajudicial execution, my Listees just... drop dead.  Or are taken out in the wrong fashion, a tragedy equal to the horror of their continued existence.  If you have any insight into how I might stem the tide of these unworthy deaths and promote the karma-cleansing of my efficient Kill List, the comment section is all yours.

If you're lathered in a cold sweat and thinking of calling the Interwebs Keystone Kops, relax. I was voted the Family Member Least Likely To Commit Murder.

So, it is Tuesday.  The Mother-Unit may yet gambol along the edge of her watery front yard, scotch and soda in one hand, the other arm gracefully indicating the vastness of the Atlantic.  The Brother-Unit may get to drop the F-bomb on another set of undergraduates, or he may be granted furlough to gambol alongside the Mother-Unit, leaving now and then to swim out past the breakers.

Have I told you lately, Dear Readers, that I love you?  Particularly You... That's right, You.

Instructions for Tuesday:

• Point your toes and twirl, twirl, twirl!
• Shrink, tumors, shrink!  Shrink, tumors, shrink! Shrink, tumors, shrink!

© 2013 L. Ryan

Happy Birthday, Grader Boob!

J'ai passé une nuit blanche.  No surprise there.  The good news is that I completed all the forms necessary for my continued receipt of the big monies.  No, that stretched and screaming envelope has NOT been mailed or otherwise transferred from my sticky fingers to my insurer's cold claw.  I plan to weasel my way into Fred's Good Graces so that it gets dropped into the appropriate mail box -- as soon as The Fredster wakes up.


[He did NOT pass a white night, sleepless.  He did, however, only wish me a good evening at 4 am, before stumbling in the direction of the closest uninhabited Guest Wing.  Sometimes we sleep where the Manor tells us to -- She murmurs "Gargoyle Alley," and off we go -- She suggests the Paisley Pavilion, and you grab your favorite pillow, because those suites were meant more for play than rest, and the Brother Monks like to make semi-permanent forts out of bolsters and piled mattresses (with Abbot Truffatore carefully packed in their centers).]


Despite lacking the clarity that comes from sleeping, I was pretty darned focused. I think I ate every 10-15 minutes, following a free-wheeling menu ranging from scorched Kettle Korn, apples, a peach, yogurt, and cauliflower to rye toast.


I had a fit of laughter when I spotted a carefully dated frozen washcloth that I'd folded inside a plastic bag to serve as a cold compress for my future aching head.  Fred had placed it on a plate inside the fridge -- to defrost, I guess -- and had affixed this query:  What *is* this?  Clearly, he thought something fuzzy, green, and out-of-date had no place inside his freezer.


Anyway, due to a resultant blood sugar in the one bazillion range, my vision is a mess.  That'll clear up once I take my 9 million units of insulin.


The way the story goes, I don't "really" have diabetes.  Oh, no.  That would be too simple.  I have "steroid-induced hyperglycemia," or, as the nurses in the hospital deigned to call it:  Diabetes.  The "steroid" part is only important when NOT being formulaic about insulin -- for example, on a day where my steroid consumption will be decreased.  In that case, it's important that I not be loaded up with the usual dose of long-acting insulin, since my blood sugars will be lower in the absence of prednisone or hydrocortisone, or whatever.  Given that infection also causes blood sugars to rise, no one is convinced that I have the dread diabetes, but I still end up testing 3-4 times a day and injecting insulin or scarfing down glucose, depending on the results.  It's crazy.  MDVIP Go-To-Guy is more fearful of me dying via hypoglycemia than he is concerned about the myriad symptoms caused by high blood sugars... try explaining that to a classically trained nurse-type person.


I have a point, and that point is that I started jonesing for cake, sometime after the yogurt and before the peach.


Cake made me think of birthdays, and that reminded me that today belongs to Grader Boob:  Happy Birthday, Grader Boob!


When last we heard from our intrepid Educating Hero, a mere two days ago, he was whining:

Have 84 papers -- Rogerian arguments all -- to grade in preparation for conferences next week. Papers and conferences -- I truly am in Hell! They get a week off from class and have to see me for a 10-minute period, while I get to say the same thing 84 times.But that's why we earn the big bucks.

I hope his students know about the "no contact" rule on birthdays.

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too many words

in my previous post, i was unduly cavalier about my odd relatives.  my first electronic act upon getting home from the hospital friday evening was to jot down [or laboriously peck out on my lilliputian keyboard] an email to the best brother-unit a sister could wish to have. that's right, i found myself unleashing a week's worth of pent up emotion all over sweet Grader Boob -- the self-imposed and preferred nickname of my english professor sibling, forever wading his way through a swampy, gassy pool of purported essays and research papers.


he's been in the game a good 30 years, has Grader Boob, and still spends 45 careful minutes on 2-3 page bits of underclass erudition.  he provides the most helpful and attentive commentary these youthful writers are likely to ever receive. i'm not saying that 'cause he's my brother-unit;  i'm also saying that because his standards are not simply maintained over Lo, These Many Years, they are, if anything, more stringent.  it's a sign of hope for those of us who aren't as convinced of a cheery future based on what we witness in the classroom. 


you know, stuff like having your hip broken by a student because you were the only physical barrier to his escape from the police officer hot on his heels. and having your students steal your walker when you make it back to work after the hip replacement!  stuff like that.


yeah, i dunno why, but that large "instance" keeps coming back to haunt me and will always inform my assessment of today's yutes.


of course, that was my experience at the level of high school instruction.  there weren't, thank goodness, any corresponding moments of physical violence in my 19 years of university teaching.  


no, those years had other offerings designed to maintain a steady state of depression. 


you know, stuff like having college freshmen and sophomores assert that the crusades date from the early 1900s -- before the american civil war of the 1950s -- and after world war II, that awful conflict of the mid-nineteenth century.  this academic high point occurred during my oh-so-brief stint as a latin teacher.  decades of research in determining pedagogical best practices have shown that the intermingling of disciplines, in this case ancient history and classics*, leads to student confusion and decades of lower back pain.

* in case you were wondering just what sort of radical latin class i was conducting by my unreasonable expectation that tomorrow's leaders might see parallels between humanity's tedious insistence on holocausts in various guises across time... it was a freaking warm up exercise designed to seamlessly review a few expressions with bellum and to introduce a short essay assignment.  instead, my brain exploded.  for those of you interested, these chestnuts were to be the inspiration for those 2-3 sentence-long masterworks:

bella horrida bella  (Virgil)

bella detesta matribus (Horace)

bellum omnium in omnes

bellum domesticum 

Ibis redibis nunquam per bella peribis (Oracles of Dodona) [a teacher's favorite, this one]

honestly, i've no clue why my mind went on this bender but, as you know, the guiding philosophy here at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle is "whose blog is it, anyway?"


i blame everything on the nefarious influences of Grader Boob.  


has he made any suggestions to moi-même, as to how my writing might be improved?  yes.  one suggestion, repeatedly -- making me worry over the possibility of early onset dementia.


hmmm?  what?  oh... right!  "too many words."  

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hi boob,

i spent the week in the hospital and am in a foul mood.  

you have been warned.

it was awful but could have been much worse.  i had the headache from hell, nausea and vomiting, topped off with more of a fever than "normal." called my MDVIP go-to-guy doc last saturday, taking care not to phone until he'd had time to get home after temple.  even though he encourages patients to call whenever there's a real need, i hate messing with anyone's sabbath.  god might get pissed.  so go-to-guy answered on the second ring and informed me he had just arrived in barcelona, to which i replied, "but you can still call in a prescription, right?"  


[i came close to demanding why he had not been available six hours earlier, that being the time differential between tête de hergé and spain, but managed to hold my tongue.]


so that's why his partner, dr. k, was on call when i decided i couldn't take this particular constellation of symptoms any longer.. then dr. k's aunt up and died and he flew off  to new york, making the time differences for my doctors simply untenable -- fred put one watch on each wrist but that only made things worse. 


i booked passage on the queen mary, anxious to keep up with the jet-setters in a manner befitting my socio-economic realities. but due to partner-man's in-flight telephonic insistence, we ended up at st. jo's emergency room instead.


why, yes!  that *is* the very same hospital what gifted me with crps to begin with, by a well orchestrated Sentinel Event back in 2002. had i lost my mind, returning to the scene of their crime?  well, yes, i suppose i had lost my mind... to a mother of a headache (imagine me, whimpering while rocking back and forth, to and fro...) and several days of high fever and nausea.  he tricked me, that wily partner, into expecting just a bag or two of fluids and some cortef.  


they wouldn't release me, of course, and as i was being wisked around the corridors and back alleys of that infernal place,  i decided to keep an open mind and a closed mouth... 


...until i couldn't any longer.  i managed four whole days without a single smart-assed comment, without any hint of the fear for my life that emerges whenever i'm within a nautical mile of that place.  did the fact that i was under a gag order by their risk management department legal eagles assist me in holding my tongue?  nope.  forgot completely about it.  fred's eyes bugged out.


how am i to remember that the murderous staff there cannot be held in any way accountable for their crimes against humanity? let's review, darling boob:  pounding head, empty and spasming stomach, high heat, extreme pain -- much of that pain from the pre-existing crap for which they are largely responsible -- adrenal (and renal!) insufficiency, lupus, avascular necrosis, osteomyelitis, and a partridge in a pear tree.  i think four days was admirable.


i strongly suggested discharge home to the hospitalist who rounded this morning. the bottom line?  despite kidney and sinus infections that were piddly and refusing to grow in cultures (that's my leitmotif), the ID docs decided it was my left shoulder at fault and ordered a CT scan of the whole area -- head, left shoulder, kidneys, hips, the squatters in my estomac, etc.  they even seemed to have clear ideas of why the pus in my shoulder wouldn't grow in the lab -- blaming the phenom on one of two sort of ordinary bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics. since i am immunosuppressed, these average-joe sorts of bugs can be a problem. not the zebras doctors have been chasing for the past three years, but good old pedestrian plow horses.   


so we were all anxious to get the CT results.  i actually entertained thoughts of getting cured of these accursed bone infections! drum roll, please... because radiology, despite discussing the areas to be scanned with me, despite the written orders, despite doing preliminary imaging to make sure all was fine... radiology reported that they failed to scan the left shoulder.  


remember the port i had put in some time in march, before the ketamine infusions?  well, it has never been accessible for blood draws.  fine for infusions, but not available for anything else.  [grrr.]  the nurses, in attempting to explain to ID why some labs were not done, blamed the confusion on a member of the "iv team" who was supposed to draw the blood from my port...  i may have, kind of, sort of, sat there like a silent lump while the lying liars lied.  


yes, scientific method remains at its finest at st.jo's;  the brainiacs are still at the wheel.  


the thing that sent me over the edge, however, was the damned rsd/crps.  


fred and i have tried every trick we can think of, from making cute little signs for the bed, distributing informational fliers, having doctors write entries in the chart,  putting notes on the door, even suggesting it as a great topic for an in-service, etc. 


all we are asking is that folks not touch my legs and ask before touching my hands.  we have never had a positive response.  tell a nurse (or doctor or phlebotomist or tech) not to touch and you engender, apparently, that very urge in them.  the unfailing pattern:

me:  please don't touch my legs.  thanks!

health care professional:  of course not! [pokes at feet in order to feel pedal pulses, grabs calves for some unknown reason]

me [from the ceiling]:  DON'T TOUCH MY FREAKING LEGS!

health care professional:  you don't have to get nasty.  all you have to do is tell me nicely, profderien. [hates me for the remainder of my stay]

common variations involve "oh, i didn't think you meant me" and "i can't help it if the stethoscope around my neck swings down and hits your feet."

very, very, very disturbing?  since the declaration by the state that their screwup in 2002 was a Sentinel Event?  i kind of thought they would know by now what CRPS *was*.  it was disheartening in the extreme to find only two doctors (the ER doc and an ID doc) and ONE nurse who knew that it is a central nervous system disorder involving severe pain, allodynia, movement disorders, etc. -- just, in general, what it is about.

everyone else said yes when i asked if they knew what crps/rsd was (i unpacked the acronyms for them as well).  these folks all proceeded to then do you know what, leaving me on the ceiling again...  i cried, not from the pain, but from pure sadness and frustration.  the doctor who was in charge kept telling me it was a combination connective tissue disorder and cellulitis.  she apparently wrote that in the chart and the nurses all thought it a great quote.

my favorite moment?  two nurses leaning over, their elbows propped on the the footboard of the bed, staring at my feet.  one of them has a big smile on her face, and keeps advancing her index finger toward my swollen, dark-purple and decaying right foot, saying, "i can't touch this, hmm?  what would happen? i seen this before, ms. profderien.  this here is cellulitis.  you got to keep it clean. what would happen if i touched it, hmmm? we need to scrub this foot." she actually winked at the nurse next to her.  yep, she's gonna wash off discoloration from lack of blood supply and i shall be cured by soap and water.  i confess:  i didn't bother with please or thank you, or if you don't mind... and went directly to cursing at her.

okay, i feel better now.  
i guess i let things build up a bit too much.
okay, so maybe tears are still running down my moon face.

the ID docs want me to see dr. d (ShoulderMan!) asap.  it just so happens that i had already made an appt for next week, because the shoulder was getting pretty awful.  the best advice, though, was "go where they know you, know crps, and until you get there here are some antibiotics, stay in bed, but come back to the ER for a fever of 100.5 or higher." 


at that moment, the tech came in to check my temp, and it was 100.7!  we all had a good chuckle and then i went straight home where i promptly threw my thermometer away.  really.  i did.

i wouldn't mind one bit being something of an ambassador for crps, because it is very odd and despite not being all that rare, is something rarely encountered by your average medico. i am, for instance, my MDVIP go-to-guy doctor's only crps patient in 30 years of practice.  so i had to become an expert -- a dread occupation -- in order to get any kind of decent care. now, of course, go-to-guy is a crps pro.  


but to discover that the hospital that compounded error upon error such that crps was the end result has not even taught the staff to recognize it during the nine years since the sentinel event... leaves me tired, depressed, destitute -- and angry.

so much so that my dear brother has to field another rabid communication in a litany of rabid communications.

fred has had it,  is very tired -- of me, of everything.  i don't blame him at all.  just wish i could just wish it all away.

let me know more about classes and your writers... are you enjoying the reprieve from freshmen? i wish you knew how good a teacher you are. 

love,

your sister-unit, the gimp

SENTINEL EVENT: “An unexpected occurrence involving death or serious physical or psychological injury, or the risk thereof.  Serious injury specifically includes loss of limb or function.  The phrase, 'or the risk thereof' includes any process variation for which a recurrence would carry a significant chance of a serious adverse outcome.  Such events are called 'sentinel' because they signal the need for immediate investigation and response.”