Bucket List
What do you want to do before you 'kick the bucket'?
I've decided to keep an ongoing list, make additions, and keep track here through two versions - short term and lifetime.
Short term in 2010:
Take a 2 week vacation to see Japan
Hike Squaw Peak under 30 minutes
Hike Camelback Mountain (tough trail, not that tourist crap)
See Conan O'Brien's new show as an audience member
Plan WWII EuroTrip, part 2 (Italy, Sicily, Switzerland, Austria, Germany)
Add muscle mass
See meteor crater (yea I've yet to do that in all this time)
Bucket List:
Go sky diving
Run for public office
More Travel!
-Road trip around the Southwest
-Flight to Northeast and Southeast
Complete an MBA program
Meet Rush Limbaugh
Expand the "fridge of fame" with more pictures and actually frame them one day
I've decided to keep an ongoing list, make additions, and keep track here through two versions - short term and lifetime.
Short term in 2010:
Take a 2 week vacation to see Japan
Hike Squaw Peak under 30 minutes
Hike Camelback Mountain (tough trail, not that tourist crap)
See Conan O'Brien's new show as an audience member
Plan WWII EuroTrip, part 2 (Italy, Sicily, Switzerland, Austria, Germany)
Add muscle mass
See meteor crater (yea I've yet to do that in all this time)
Bucket List:
Go sky diving
Run for public office
More Travel!
-Road trip around the Southwest
-Flight to Northeast and Southeast
Complete an MBA program
Meet Rush Limbaugh
Expand the "fridge of fame" with more pictures and actually frame them one day
Hospital Stay
Although the requests for more information and more blogs came unexpected, I do like the attention - so I wanted to give a quick recount of post surgery hospital stay.
Instead of going through each day, I think it would be easier to summarize the week into a single, long-day.
After the walk I would refuse breakfast/lunch (resulting in a 10 pound weight lose at the end of the week). Every three hours a tech would come in to check blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature. This happened every three hours, which was less cubersome during the day but became annoying during the night, not counting the 4:00 am blood sample visits. Not all memories are unpleasant, however, as I recall a morphine-induced ralization that my bed transformed and expanded wings, becoming a WWII P-51 mustang plane, as I was shooting down Japanese zeros over the pacific.
In conclusion? The hospital isnt as fun as it appears, plus I've yet to see a bill for this unexpected vacation. Next time I'm going to see Dr. Nick Riviera...the B is for Bargain!
The total recovery week for a ruptured appendix is 6-7 weeks, and Im happy to say I only have one more week left of slow movement and can return to hiking and winning at tennis as early as next weekend! To recovery!
Instead of going through each day, I think it would be easier to summarize the week into a single, long-day.
After the walk I would refuse breakfast/lunch (resulting in a 10 pound weight lose at the end of the week). Every three hours a tech would come in to check blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature. This happened every three hours, which was less cubersome during the day but became annoying during the night, not counting the 4:00 am blood sample visits. Not all memories are unpleasant, however, as I recall a morphine-induced ralization that my bed transformed and expanded wings, becoming a WWII P-51 mustang plane, as I was shooting down Japanese zeros over the pacific.
In conclusion? The hospital isnt as fun as it appears, plus I've yet to see a bill for this unexpected vacation. Next time I'm going to see Dr. Nick Riviera...the B is for Bargain!
The total recovery week for a ruptured appendix is 6-7 weeks, and Im happy to say I only have one more week left of slow movement and can return to hiking and winning at tennis as early as next weekend! To recovery!
A Merry Hospitalized Christmas!
Blogs. Seems most people have one - so why not - it would be a good way to go back and relive some of life's interesting points that might otherwise be forgotten. Although it might not be so tough to forget spending Christmas in a hospital in Flagstaff.
Everything had been planned for the week's visit with family up in high country, however, on the second day I developed severe stomach pains which were misdiagnosed by the local Doctor's office. Later that evening I was reluctantly headed to the emergency room. Since it was snowing heavily I recall being driven at a steady 10 mph, thus officially making it the longest ride of the year.
We arrived in the ER entrance at 11 pm on Monday, 40 minutes later I was taken to the rows of beds in the main facility to see the Doctor. I was happy to finally be admitted, but less thrilled at the patient gown... Perhaps in this technological age of wonder and human development we can design something more functional and less revealing?
Comfortably resting in the bed I was quick to point out to the nurse that this was my first visit to the ER, but this did not stop him from calling in an I.V. - which he explained isnt as bad as people think: The needle enters the vein, but is quickly pulled out leaving a tiny plastic sleeve that serves as the needle (minus the pain). Then came the blood pressure monitors, heart rate monitors, blood samples, oxygen, and a shot of the greatest medical achievement: Morphine!
The nurse had a British accent and we started to talk about my recent trip to London as part of the Band of Brothers, WWII tour. It ended with me asking him to pretend I was a wounded solider on the battlefield screaming for a medic, at which point he would show up with more morphine. It worked.
Everything was a new experience, including the ultrasound (the gallbladder was a suspect at this time and ultra sound picks up the image the fastest), however, the scan showed the gallbladder in tact, through surprisingly that I was carrying twins. I wanted to stop everything and start thinking of baby names, but alas we had to move onto the next set of tests to determine the illness. This was followed by a CT scan: and as we all know a CT, or CAT scan combines special x-ray equipment with sophisticated computers to produce multiple images of the inside of the body. A special injection is added to the I.V. so that the organs can be seen more clearly, though Homer demonstrated this better than I can via this video:
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The ensuing image was read to be an "inflamed" appendix by the on-call specialist. The results was a scheduled operation to remove the appendix at 6 am. Not knowing this at the time, the appendix was actually ruptured and the surgery would be postponed until 1:45 pm the following day.
I was transferred out of the ER and into a private room upstairs to wait until the surgery. The big moment finally came around noon on Tuesday, when all the "preparations" started to take shape. I recall the techs adding something special to the IV drip and asking me a general question, the last thing I remember is trying to answer but I was out before I finished a single sentence.
I have absolutely no memory of the operation, only the realization of waking up and being utterly confused of where I was and how I got there. Post surgery, it was discovered that a tiny middle eastern terrorist was able to get past my stomach's security, get inside the appendix, screamed 'Allah Akbar" and managed to detonate a small charge, thus rupturing the appendix.
This does not deter from the good news, however, as I was unable to find any scars from the operations. It seems the entire process was done using "laparoscopic" or tiny incisions that allow a camera and robotic arms to go into the body, thus not leaving any scars!
The person checking my vitals quickly informed me that the clean up took considerably longer than expected but the operation was over and I was to be transferred to a room upstairs. I also found a plastic tube with a suction bulb at the end attached to my stomach, this was to facilitate a drainage of all unwanted liquids from the stomach and would stay in until the last day of the visit. The recovery is the hospital has begun.
Everything had been planned for the week's visit with family up in high country, however, on the second day I developed severe stomach pains which were misdiagnosed by the local Doctor's office. Later that evening I was reluctantly headed to the emergency room. Since it was snowing heavily I recall being driven at a steady 10 mph, thus officially making it the longest ride of the year.
We arrived in the ER entrance at 11 pm on Monday, 40 minutes later I was taken to the rows of beds in the main facility to see the Doctor. I was happy to finally be admitted, but less thrilled at the patient gown... Perhaps in this technological age of wonder and human development we can design something more functional and less revealing?
Comfortably resting in the bed I was quick to point out to the nurse that this was my first visit to the ER, but this did not stop him from calling in an I.V. - which he explained isnt as bad as people think: The needle enters the vein, but is quickly pulled out leaving a tiny plastic sleeve that serves as the needle (minus the pain). Then came the blood pressure monitors, heart rate monitors, blood samples, oxygen, and a shot of the greatest medical achievement: Morphine!The nurse had a British accent and we started to talk about my recent trip to London as part of the Band of Brothers, WWII tour. It ended with me asking him to pretend I was a wounded solider on the battlefield screaming for a medic, at which point he would show up with more morphine. It worked.
Everything was a new experience, including the ultrasound (the gallbladder was a suspect at this time and ultra sound picks up the image the fastest), however, the scan showed the gallbladder in tact, through surprisingly that I was carrying twins. I wanted to stop everything and start thinking of baby names, but alas we had to move onto the next set of tests to determine the illness. This was followed by a CT scan: and as we all know a CT, or CAT scan combines special x-ray equipment with sophisticated computers to produce multiple images of the inside of the body. A special injection is added to the I.V. so that the organs can be seen more clearly, though Homer demonstrated this better than I can via this video:
">
The ensuing image was read to be an "inflamed" appendix by the on-call specialist. The results was a scheduled operation to remove the appendix at 6 am. Not knowing this at the time, the appendix was actually ruptured and the surgery would be postponed until 1:45 pm the following day.
I was transferred out of the ER and into a private room upstairs to wait until the surgery. The big moment finally came around noon on Tuesday, when all the "preparations" started to take shape. I recall the techs adding something special to the IV drip and asking me a general question, the last thing I remember is trying to answer but I was out before I finished a single sentence.
I have absolutely no memory of the operation, only the realization of waking up and being utterly confused of where I was and how I got there. Post surgery, it was discovered that a tiny middle eastern terrorist was able to get past my stomach's security, get inside the appendix, screamed 'Allah Akbar" and managed to detonate a small charge, thus rupturing the appendix.
This does not deter from the good news, however, as I was unable to find any scars from the operations. It seems the entire process was done using "laparoscopic" or tiny incisions that allow a camera and robotic arms to go into the body, thus not leaving any scars!
The person checking my vitals quickly informed me that the clean up took considerably longer than expected but the operation was over and I was to be transferred to a room upstairs. I also found a plastic tube with a suction bulb at the end attached to my stomach, this was to facilitate a drainage of all unwanted liquids from the stomach and would stay in until the last day of the visit. The recovery is the hospital has begun.
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