Well, it’s official; I’m as healthy as I can be in the aftermath of my health emergency last year. As John posted in his blog, I had an emergency colostomy in late March 2010 because my colon sprang a leak and I was developing an ugly, life-threatening infection in my guts. After the infection was killed and my guts had a chance to heal thoroughly, the colostomy was reversed in June. There was a lingering chance, albeit small, that I might have an undetected colon cancer despite a barium enema back between the surgeries and biopsies during them. It’s unusual for someone my age to suddenly develop a hole in their colon, though, without some precipitating factor like a malignancy. Doctors like to actually look at the insides of the colon to determine if there is a problem. Dr. Holly couldn't look at mine until I was completely healed. So, I had a colonoscopy today and my colon looks fine. Whew!
They recommend everyone have a colonoscopy at age fifty and every five years thereafter. These are the same people who want women to place their breasts in a plexiglass clamp every year. Who invents these things, De Sade Biomedical Devices?
The actual scan wasn’t horrid; it’s the prep. I’d done the prep twice before, once for the barium enema and once for the reconnection surgery, so it was only extremely unpleasant. There are some tricks to make it bearable. I had a prescription for “Go-Lytely.” a bad joke. You go, but it sure isn't lightly. The stuff comes as a powder in a gallon jug. You add water and shake. I added sugar-free lemon-aide mix to flavor it. No red or purple foods are allowed before the test (their remnants look like blood and tend to make the doctor think the worst) or I would have used fruit punch mix instead. I mixed the jug early in the day and refrigerated it. I also poured it over ice cubes, then drank it with a straw. This way, the liquid was very cold and didn’t linger in the front of my mouth, bypassing a lot of tastebuds and chilling the rest. You are supposed to drink a full glass every ten to fifteen minutes, starting about 6:00 PM. I started closer to eight. The stuff wasn’t bad but the aftertaste was.... not good. I took a slug of white grape juice after each glassful and that made it OK.
After an hour of drinking and worrying about when the runs would start, I moved all of my stuff into the bathroom. I had a big container of ice cubes, the jug of Go-Lytely, a bottle of white grape juice, two drinking glasses with ice and straws, a book, and my cell phone. I also got out two fresh rolls of TP. Once I started going, I didn’t want anything necessary out of easy arm’s reach.
The idea is to wash out the colon for the scope by drinking enough of the stuff so you start to run clear. After the second hour, what was coming out looked pretty much like what was going in, so I stopped drinking the Go-Lytely; I had to take about half of the jug to accomplish this. Everyone is different, though. Some people have to drink the whole four liters. I was in the bathroom for about ninety minutes, non-stop. I didn’t sit the whole time (that would have hurt my tush!), but I didn’t want to leave the immediate vicinity of the toilet. Finally, I was able to move to the kitchen as the interval between spasms increased to fifteen minutes and longer after I stopped taking in more Go-Lytely. Finally, I stopped going, took a shower, and went to bed about 1:30 AM.
The alarm went off at 5:30 AM. I tried to ignore it until almost 6:00. I was already half-dressed; after my shower, I put on my clean underwear, socks, and undershirt, along with my sleeping fleece and sweats (it’s COLD in my room in the winter with no heat in the unfinished upstairs, but I sleep really well!). I just had to pull off the sweats and put on my trousers, sweater, and shoes. This took a few minutes so I had enough time to drink a Diet Coke to wake me up and go out to warm up the car with plenty of time in order to leave before 6:45, which was also the time when I had to stop drinking clear liquids (Diet Coke is considered a clear liquid as it doesn't have any milk in it) before the procedure. Cooley Dickinson Hospital is half an hour away and I was due there at 7:15. I arrived on time.
I checked in and they immediately called me out of the waiting room. I was led to a dressing room, stripped, put on a johnny and robe, nifty gripper socks, and sat down to wait. The nurses in the endoscopy suite are jolly; since no one wants to be there, I guess they feel like they have to try to keep our spirits up. One wanted to insert an IV port in my hand but she couldn’t find a good vein. I think all of those veins got blown out while I was in the hospital for the surgeries. She found one inside my elbow and was pretty painless. Dr. Holly was early so I went into the colonoscopy suite at 8:00 AM, fifteen minutes early. The last things they took were my underpants and glasses. You know it's for real when they take your underpants and glasses. I was disappointed that I couldn’t watch the procedure; the monitor was too far away for me to see with no glasses.
Dr. Holly looked at my belly before she got out the scope. She was pleased to see how it had healed. The actual scope didn’t hurt. She was pretty fast, too, although I might be wrong; the drugs may have compacted time. Dr. Holly took one biopsy sample; there was a bit of inflammation at the spot where she connected the sections of my colon. She wasn’t concerned but she always biopsies anything that isn’t perfectly normal. I had a weird spot on my foot biopsied by my regular doctor several years ago; it turned out to just be a patch of inflammation that cleared up with steroid cream. We won’t be using any cream inside my guts, but this one is probably nothing, too.
My colon is basically healthy. Now, I just have to exercise my abdominal muscles so I get back the full ability to pick up my feet. I’m much better; I had to use a walker after the first surgery because Dr. Holly gutted me like I was a fish, to wash as much infection out as possible before she stapled me shut.
Jack picked me up after the colonoscopy was finished and I had spent about an hour in recovery. Actually, he came to take me out to breakfast, then returned me to the hospital so I could drive myself home. I had been walking around under my own steam for half an hour before he arrived and, by the time we ate, it had been well over two hours since the procedure. I think Dr. Holly didn’t use a lot of happy juice on me; I didn’t need it. I think they look at how people are acting and adjust the dosage accordingly. I wanted to watch so I wasn’t all freaked out, like some people.
Katie Couric is right; colonoscopy isn’t fun but it’s no big deal. It might save your life. If I had had one before I got sick, maybe I would have known that I had those weak spots and would have adjusted my diet, earlier. Or maybe nothing would have prevented my emergency. I’m just glad to know I’m all right now.
Go Jesse!
To follow up on my previous entry about TSA body-searches, I read that Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota and professional wrestler, is suing the TSA and Janet Napolitano for sexual battery. Ventura has an artificial hip joint, the original having been replaced by titanium, which can set off the metal detectors at airports. I find it somewhat amusing that a man who used to make his living dressed in nothing but a bright spandex brief and boots, who grabbed other men dressed in equally lurid spandex outfits for prize money, is suing for being groped. But, he’s retired from that now and he doesn’t want his genitals to be handled by strangers any longer, or at least, not when he’s not being paid for it. Good for him! I wish him the best. Maybe he’ll get all of us some satisfaction from the courts because he can afford to hire a good lawyer for the length of time it will take for the case to wend its way through the system, unlike the rest of us.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
John’s latest book
Last night, John gave me an advance copy of his latest book, “Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian. With Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families, & Teachers.” Although it’s got a color print of the actual cover, it’s a spiral-bound copy of his computer print-out, so I guess it’s actually an advanced advance copy, because real advanced copies are more like trade-paperbacks, with real book binding and pagination. Of course, I polished it off before I went to bed. Since we had another big snow storm last night, I’m writing this to avoid going outside to clear the driveway of a LOT of snow for the third time in eight days.
I went up to John’s house last night, ahead of the storm, to show him all of the photographs that I could find of him that I took in the 1980s and 90s. The Discovery Channel wants pictures for the show that they are doing about him. I don’t have many pictures of him without Jack. When Jack was an infant, I took at least a pair of pictures of the baby every week because I knew that babies change dramatically in their first year and I wanted to document it. I was the youngest of five children and my parents had only a single picture of me as an infant. It was something of a family joke but I felt enough like an afterthought while growing up that this just confirmed my feelings of being invisible.
I’ve got five albums of pictures of Jack and the places we went in his first two years, and another, bigger album that spans the time up to age five. And I’ve got a bunch of loose pictures of other times. I just didn’t have many pictures with John as he wasn’t around very much in those days. I also found our wedding pictures. John took digital shots of the things that interested him and he will send on the ones that might appeal to the producers. Whiles I was there, I saw a stack of his books and asked for one. He had given me a similar copy of his first book. This time, I told him to sign it for me as someday, I might need to put it up on Ebay! I then reassured him that I doubted this would happen, but our great grandchildren might want to sell it. He inscribed it to me. Who knows what the future may bring. I’ll sign it, too, for the sake of posterity and perhaps to further enrich those hypothetical great grandchildren.
As I read the book, I was struck by a couple of things. John explicitly thinks about the types of behavior that I usually want to conceal or forget. He comments on some of his own behaviors that I only noticed in myself after he mentioned them. And I can see them in him, but had not noticed them in myself until he described them. I think this may be part of a decreased notion of individuality in people on the autism spectrum that he talks about in the book, but I also think that people on the spectrum want to see themselves as normal and may subconsciously ignore the things that they do that do not conform to neurotypical norms.
He also coins a new term for neurotypical, nypical (rhymes with typical). I liked the contraction as easier to type and think and, as he says, it gives a technical term for the vast majority to deal with just as people on the spectrum must deal with a tag. It evens the score, pejoratively speaking.
John also talks about the smile reflex, where nypical babies smile back when someone smiles at them - it is part of mirror neuron activity. People on the spectrum have impaired mirror neurons (probably over-regulated) and so they often do not smile, or react very weakly to facial expressions. In the Great Picture Hunt, I ran across some photos of myself (and my siblings) - I look like I’m about four years old - and I’m pretty grim, despite a party setting. As a high school student, someone told me that my peers thought badly of me because I never smiled - they thought I was stuck-up. When I decided to stop being shy, I went out of my way to start smiling at everyone and I started to feel happy as a result. Now, smiling is my default facial expression. I suspect this has something to do with why I’m not chronically depressed (although anyone in their right mind MIGHT be in my place!). And it is a major part of how I mask my social confusion. As I’ve said before, people are either naturally nice to you if you smile at them or else they think you are up to something and they’d better be nice to protect themselves! In any case, I like to have poeple be nice to me so I start the ball rolling by smiling at them.
Temple Grandin said that she was like a Martain anthropologist, studying those peculiar humans; I always assumed that I was the only Martian in my family (I often wondered if I was adopted despite looking just like my dad). I had a long chat with my big brother a few months ago and discovered that we have very similar sensory deficits and that he has always carefully hidden his inability to remember faces! I had taken an online test for autism spectrum traits and came out pretty definitively on the spectrum. I was distraught. The study wanted to see if the spectrum was familial, so I had sent him the link. My brother took the test, too, and I was happily relieved when he tested even more autistic than me! We talked about other family members. We belong to a very eccentric family on our mother’s side; we believe that we have lots of relatives who share these traits. It had made me feel a lot closer to him even though we live on opposite coasts and rarely chat, but neither of us is alone, hiding it, any more. It is interesting that we both started our academic studies in the sciences but ended up getting graduate degrees in disciplines that study the human condition; he’s a lawyer and I’m an anthropologist. And I don’t come from Mars any more.
This book is very different from “Look Me in the Eye.” This is a much kinder book. I suspect it reflects how John has changed as a result of talking to lots of parents of kids on the spectrum, and his realization that he is held up as a role model for those kids. And that’s a good thing, as he tries to live up to the status. The book is also a how-to guide for people on the spectrum and those who interact with people on the spectrum,. I suspect it comes out of his work at Elms College.
I’ll talk about other chapters in later posts. I finished snowblowing and shoveling the driveway and sidewalks in the middle of writing this post. Again. I’m so tired of winter. It’s going to get REALLY cold this weekend. I missed last spring and summer from being sick; I want my warm weather and all of this snow and cold isn't helping!
I went up to John’s house last night, ahead of the storm, to show him all of the photographs that I could find of him that I took in the 1980s and 90s. The Discovery Channel wants pictures for the show that they are doing about him. I don’t have many pictures of him without Jack. When Jack was an infant, I took at least a pair of pictures of the baby every week because I knew that babies change dramatically in their first year and I wanted to document it. I was the youngest of five children and my parents had only a single picture of me as an infant. It was something of a family joke but I felt enough like an afterthought while growing up that this just confirmed my feelings of being invisible.
I’ve got five albums of pictures of Jack and the places we went in his first two years, and another, bigger album that spans the time up to age five. And I’ve got a bunch of loose pictures of other times. I just didn’t have many pictures with John as he wasn’t around very much in those days. I also found our wedding pictures. John took digital shots of the things that interested him and he will send on the ones that might appeal to the producers. Whiles I was there, I saw a stack of his books and asked for one. He had given me a similar copy of his first book. This time, I told him to sign it for me as someday, I might need to put it up on Ebay! I then reassured him that I doubted this would happen, but our great grandchildren might want to sell it. He inscribed it to me. Who knows what the future may bring. I’ll sign it, too, for the sake of posterity and perhaps to further enrich those hypothetical great grandchildren.
As I read the book, I was struck by a couple of things. John explicitly thinks about the types of behavior that I usually want to conceal or forget. He comments on some of his own behaviors that I only noticed in myself after he mentioned them. And I can see them in him, but had not noticed them in myself until he described them. I think this may be part of a decreased notion of individuality in people on the autism spectrum that he talks about in the book, but I also think that people on the spectrum want to see themselves as normal and may subconsciously ignore the things that they do that do not conform to neurotypical norms.
He also coins a new term for neurotypical, nypical (rhymes with typical). I liked the contraction as easier to type and think and, as he says, it gives a technical term for the vast majority to deal with just as people on the spectrum must deal with a tag. It evens the score, pejoratively speaking.
John also talks about the smile reflex, where nypical babies smile back when someone smiles at them - it is part of mirror neuron activity. People on the spectrum have impaired mirror neurons (probably over-regulated) and so they often do not smile, or react very weakly to facial expressions. In the Great Picture Hunt, I ran across some photos of myself (and my siblings) - I look like I’m about four years old - and I’m pretty grim, despite a party setting. As a high school student, someone told me that my peers thought badly of me because I never smiled - they thought I was stuck-up. When I decided to stop being shy, I went out of my way to start smiling at everyone and I started to feel happy as a result. Now, smiling is my default facial expression. I suspect this has something to do with why I’m not chronically depressed (although anyone in their right mind MIGHT be in my place!). And it is a major part of how I mask my social confusion. As I’ve said before, people are either naturally nice to you if you smile at them or else they think you are up to something and they’d better be nice to protect themselves! In any case, I like to have poeple be nice to me so I start the ball rolling by smiling at them.
Temple Grandin said that she was like a Martain anthropologist, studying those peculiar humans; I always assumed that I was the only Martian in my family (I often wondered if I was adopted despite looking just like my dad). I had a long chat with my big brother a few months ago and discovered that we have very similar sensory deficits and that he has always carefully hidden his inability to remember faces! I had taken an online test for autism spectrum traits and came out pretty definitively on the spectrum. I was distraught. The study wanted to see if the spectrum was familial, so I had sent him the link. My brother took the test, too, and I was happily relieved when he tested even more autistic than me! We talked about other family members. We belong to a very eccentric family on our mother’s side; we believe that we have lots of relatives who share these traits. It had made me feel a lot closer to him even though we live on opposite coasts and rarely chat, but neither of us is alone, hiding it, any more. It is interesting that we both started our academic studies in the sciences but ended up getting graduate degrees in disciplines that study the human condition; he’s a lawyer and I’m an anthropologist. And I don’t come from Mars any more.
This book is very different from “Look Me in the Eye.” This is a much kinder book. I suspect it reflects how John has changed as a result of talking to lots of parents of kids on the spectrum, and his realization that he is held up as a role model for those kids. And that’s a good thing, as he tries to live up to the status. The book is also a how-to guide for people on the spectrum and those who interact with people on the spectrum,. I suspect it comes out of his work at Elms College.
I’ll talk about other chapters in later posts. I finished snowblowing and shoveling the driveway and sidewalks in the middle of writing this post. Again. I’m so tired of winter. It’s going to get REALLY cold this weekend. I missed last spring and summer from being sick; I want my warm weather and all of this snow and cold isn't helping!
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Snow is God's way of telling you that you need exercise
We've been lucky in the Connecticut River valley - we've had a number of humongous storms in the last couple of years and almost every one has come through in such a way as to, essentially, miss us. For example, the big storm on December 26, 2010, that whacked New York City resulted in less than four inches of snow in my yard. Well, all of that ended today.
About midnight, the snow started to fall. Through the night, it continued, gently enveloping my world in a featherbed of marshmallow fluff. I have a metal awning over my door; snow can only blow onto the steps and there is eight inches between the top step and my threshold. I had to shove my screen door open as the level of snow was higher than the bottom of the door at 8 AM. I don't know how much snow was on the ground; it was a lot more than on the steps.
My neighbors laughed in the road, hauling their two kids around the block on sleds.The kids giggled while their parents panted from the exertion. A little while later, they returned to start the job of clearing their driveway.
I started clearing snow at 9:15 AM. First, I had to shovel off the steps, then clear a path to the garage. I like to clear off the strip in front of my garage door, so when I open it, snow doesn't fall inside and make it hard to seal the door closed. Only once it is all cleared can I lift the door, take out the snowblower, start it up, and begin to clear more efficiently. I have a hard time shoveling as I have ruptured disk in the middle of my back (I never should have tried to install the air conditioner in the front window three years ago without moving the sofa, first!). Today wasn't too bad; the snow was light and fluffy. there was just an incredible amount of it!
First, I clear the bottom of the driveway, then, I sweep the car off and move it. Then, I clear the top of the driveway and the sidewalks. That's how I usually do it. Today, I had to take a break after I moved the car. I had been clearing for almost three hours at that point and I needed a rest. I went inside and warmed up. I came out about 90 minutes later and more than four more inches of snow had fallen. It was disheartening. I felt like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill over and over again.
The weather report said that Granby had a total of 23 inches. I'm going to say we had the same as I'm too tired to go out and measure. I hurt all over. This is more work that going to the gym and I wreak of gasoline; I spilled a bit on my hand each time I filled the tank. Whine! Snivel!
My snowblower is a monster (in comparison with the neighbor's and my old one) but I fed it some bad gas in the last storm and it must have stalled over thirty times today. I had to haul it back to the garage to start it (electric starter must be plugged in). I'm keeping it full of fresh gas and it seems to be running better - maybe. I love my snowblower, though. It was the first thing that I bought it with the money I won on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," that, and a new ipod that Jack promptly took. My old snowblower refused to entirely die but it didn't really work, either.
I'm feeling conflicted. The snow was beautiful - glistening white and so fluffy it might have been feathers. This was my favorite kind of snow when I was a kid - it didn't make good snowmen but it was terrific for sledding or skiing and it was soft enough to cushion your falls. As an adult, snow is like trash, something to get rid of. I miss having the time and inclination to frolic. I was too tired to play in the snow after a day of wrestling with the snowblower. Maybe tomorrow.
About midnight, the snow started to fall. Through the night, it continued, gently enveloping my world in a featherbed of marshmallow fluff. I have a metal awning over my door; snow can only blow onto the steps and there is eight inches between the top step and my threshold. I had to shove my screen door open as the level of snow was higher than the bottom of the door at 8 AM. I don't know how much snow was on the ground; it was a lot more than on the steps.
My neighbors laughed in the road, hauling their two kids around the block on sleds.The kids giggled while their parents panted from the exertion. A little while later, they returned to start the job of clearing their driveway.
I started clearing snow at 9:15 AM. First, I had to shovel off the steps, then clear a path to the garage. I like to clear off the strip in front of my garage door, so when I open it, snow doesn't fall inside and make it hard to seal the door closed. Only once it is all cleared can I lift the door, take out the snowblower, start it up, and begin to clear more efficiently. I have a hard time shoveling as I have ruptured disk in the middle of my back (I never should have tried to install the air conditioner in the front window three years ago without moving the sofa, first!). Today wasn't too bad; the snow was light and fluffy. there was just an incredible amount of it!
First, I clear the bottom of the driveway, then, I sweep the car off and move it. Then, I clear the top of the driveway and the sidewalks. That's how I usually do it. Today, I had to take a break after I moved the car. I had been clearing for almost three hours at that point and I needed a rest. I went inside and warmed up. I came out about 90 minutes later and more than four more inches of snow had fallen. It was disheartening. I felt like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill over and over again.
The weather report said that Granby had a total of 23 inches. I'm going to say we had the same as I'm too tired to go out and measure. I hurt all over. This is more work that going to the gym and I wreak of gasoline; I spilled a bit on my hand each time I filled the tank. Whine! Snivel!
My snowblower is a monster (in comparison with the neighbor's and my old one) but I fed it some bad gas in the last storm and it must have stalled over thirty times today. I had to haul it back to the garage to start it (electric starter must be plugged in). I'm keeping it full of fresh gas and it seems to be running better - maybe. I love my snowblower, though. It was the first thing that I bought it with the money I won on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," that, and a new ipod that Jack promptly took. My old snowblower refused to entirely die but it didn't really work, either.
I'm feeling conflicted. The snow was beautiful - glistening white and so fluffy it might have been feathers. This was my favorite kind of snow when I was a kid - it didn't make good snowmen but it was terrific for sledding or skiing and it was soft enough to cushion your falls. As an adult, snow is like trash, something to get rid of. I miss having the time and inclination to frolic. I was too tired to play in the snow after a day of wrestling with the snowblower. Maybe tomorrow.
Friday, January 7, 2011
From the edge of oblivion
I’m oblivious. That’s the only conclusion I can reach. See if you agree.
Yesterday, I went shopping at Costco with Amelia. I needed to refill my prescriptions and pick up salad makings, as I’m determined to eat healthy for the next six weeks. In the parking lot, we were bemused by some woman in another car, who was quite annoyed that I had pulled over to wait for an older woman to exit from her good parking spot. Yes, it was lazy of me, but I was tired. The woman pulled up close behind me and, from her expressions in the mirror, seemed angry that I wasn’t moving. Amelia finally rolled her window down and waved for the woman to go around and she did, parking at the end of the row. As she walked past my car, now gliding into the good spot, she glared at us, or so Amelia said. I only noticed her looking at us as I pulled in. Amelia got a bit upset by her; I calmed her down.
We went into Costco, i requested my refills and, while we waited for them, strolled around the store. We talked, sometimes seriously, sometimes not. I bought my salad ingredients. We snacked on samples, always a major attraction at Costco.
After I checked out, I got a hotdog for dinner and Amelia had an ice cream. We talked about learning styles; she said that her principal was certain that all students would eventually understand material that was bring presented to them. She thought this was unrealistic and I agreed, saying that this opinion was relatively new for me and was a result of my realization, formed over the last year, that I do not see most social interactions and never will, no matter how hard I try. She laughed and agreed with me, saying that the woman from the parking lot had glared at me throughout the store. Amelia said that she had wanted to tell the woman to grow up, but my ignoring her set the example that some things should be left alone.
I was astounded. I never noticed the woman, not even once. I might have if I had been alone but since I was talking to Amelia, I was concentrating on what she said. I’m good with one person at a time. All of the other people at Costco were just fuzzy cartoons in the periphery of my vision. I did notice someone who looked vaguely familiar when we checked out and greeted her; I couldn’t place her until she commented that she sometimes went shopping, too, and from the context of her comment, I was a able to place her as an employee in the pharmacy department, but she hadn’t been working that day.
Amelia and I talked further about why I am friendly to almost everyone. There is an element of cold-blooded calculation on my part. I’m never sure if they are someone that I’ve dealt with before or may deal with again in the future. If they are nice people, they will remember me as friendly and will be more inclined to help me. If they are unpleasant, it may embarrass them into being nice, or it may make them paranoid about why I’m nice in the face of their nastiness. In either case, it usually makes them behave better. Being polite and friendly costs nothing, lowers your blood pressure, and usually has a better outcome than being an SOB as your default attitude.
The advantage of being oblivious is that I can be friendly even to someone who was recently nasty to me because there is a good chance I didn't notice the nastiness, or that I don't remember who was nasty person. Therefore, I’m usually friendly; being friendly makes me feel better. If someone is repeatedly nasty to me, they will finally pierce my fog. I am capable of cutting them dead with a word and sometimes do, depending on how annoyed I am. Obsessing at any great length about the motivations of jerks isn’t worth the cost to my health, so I try to just let it go and am usually successful. For this, I’m grateful that I never see most jerky behavior. Furthermore, if isaw it all of the time, I might not be able to let things go so easily. How do neurotypicals stand the emotional avalanche? It’s better to be oblivious.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
How I spent my Christmas holidays
12/21/2010 I’m writing this from the Family Surgical Waiting Room at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA. Where to begin? Margaret is having a chunk removed from her colon this morning. Ideally, the surgery will be done completely laproscopically so her recovery time will be of a relatively short duration. I’ve been having flashbacks to my own surgeries; in March, my colon sprang a leak and I had to have an emergency colostomy. In June, my surgeon reconnected the severed ends of my colon, restoring me to normal digestive functioning. My surgeon couldn’t do everything in a single surgery because I had a nasty infection raging in my abdomen as a result of the leaking colon (there’s nothing like feces to cause an infection), like a sewer break next to a water main. The sewage had to be cleaned up and the colon allowed to heal before it could be reconnected; the surgeon told me that if she had just sewed it back together at the time of the first surgery, it would have continued to shred and leak and the infection might have killed me. Margaret doesn’t have the infection issue so her colon can immediately be sewn together after the polypy chunk is cut out.
I learned why they almost always take out at least six inches of colon for this type of surgery, instead of just removing he bit with the polyp; she will cut (and remove) the blood vessel that feeds that part of the colon; the vessel feeds about six inches of colon. If they left some of the colon with no blood vessel to feed it, that chunk of colon would die and rot (infection!), so they take out everything that is feed by the vessel that is removed.
I picked Margaret up yesterday at 4:30 PM at her pulmonologist’s office in Greenfield. We drove down to Springfield and tried to check her into the hospital. Some patients check in the night before surgery for what they call “hotel,” because it is more convenient than arriving at 6 AM. Margaret wasn’t a hotel patient; she is paralyzed on her left side and is diabetic and needed help to do the colon cleansing necessary for today’s surgery. The surgical patient rooms in this hospital date from the 1960s. They are double rooms, with tiny closets and small bathrooms. Need I say that the bathrooms are in no way handicapped accessible? Margaret couldn’t get into the bathroom in the room; the wheelchair wouldn’t go through the door. Even the “accessible” bathroom on the floor wasn’t of any use as the toilet was mounted close to a corner, with grab rails only on the left side. Margaret is paralyzed on her left. Finally, she has rheumatoid arthritis and cannot rise from a low seat. None of the toilets, not even the one in the “accessible” bathroom, had a high enough seat for her to use. The staff offered her a commode but unless one is bolted to the floor, commodes are extremely tippy to one-armed pressure. She fell while using a commode shortly after her stroke, some twenty-odd years ago, and was told to never use one. There is a company that makes a giant plastic spacer that snaps on top of the toilet and is a cheap, temporary way to raise a toilet seat but the hospital doesn’t own any.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was voted into existence by Congress in 1990. It clearly states that medical facilities cannot deny essential services, especially when architectural barriers can easily be overcome with “readily achievable” methods. To my mind, the use of a toilet for someone who can use it is an essential service and requiring her to use a bedpan is a violation of the ADA. How a hospital can get away with such a gross violation I just cannot understand. I hope Margaret kicks up a tremendous fuss. And I think I will, too, as a preemptive strike.
I was very annoyed that the nursing staff didn’t begin her colon cleansing until almost 1 AM. It wasn't entirely their fault; the pharmacy didn't deliver the "Go Lytely" on time, but the staff didn't call for it again (after the initial order at 6 PM) until I made them, around midnight. The surgeon’s instructions were to start the procedure by 6 PM and both Margaret and I were very worried that the surgery might be canceled in the absence of a proper clean-out. I really irritated the nurse by crying out, "Hurray!" when the runner finally came down the hall with the gallon jug as I was preparing to leave. I had stayed to help Margaret; the cleanse is a thoroughly unpleasant procedure, made worse by her needing to use a bedpan. The nurse was quite snippy about the fact that she had been nice enough to allow me to stay late, against hospital policy; she thought I was being sarcastic. I wasn't; I was genuinely happy, even thrilled, that Margaret was finally going to start the clean-out that was the entire reason for our presence that night. She really scolded me, upsetting Margaret. I had to leave since I knew today was going to be a long day. Since she started so late, poor Margaret was still having cramps when I arrived back at 6 AM; she was about to be transported down for pre-op and was still on the bedpan! She finally went into surgery between 7:30 and 8 AM and I came here.
This is a very nice room, with plenty of comfortable chairs, a TV, magazines, a basket of romance novels, and a couple of tables but you are not allowed to eat in here. The cafeteria is next door, however.
I’m tired.
Update on January 6, 2011 – Margaret’s surgery went very well; everything went as planned and she was released five days later in the midst of last-minute preparations for a monster snowstorm (the one that left New York City paralyzed). I drove her home and she has resumed her normal life. I even got home just as the first of the snow was sticking on the road. I hate driving in the snow as my car handles like an ice skate and I’m not a skater. Seriously, my car is horrid in snow. My last car was an all-wheel drive and I got spoiled by its ability to maneuver.
We didn’t kick up the fuss about the lack of a proper toilet in the hospital; in retrospect, we should have, but I was too busy trying to help distract Margaret and solving more immediate problems. Since she wasn’t allowed solids for days after the surgery, she just tolerated a bedpan. I don’t need to tell her story, though. I’m happy to no longer need to give her those horrible injections; the doctor stopped them. I got stressed every time I had to give one because I always wondered if this was going to be the time when I really hurt her. But, for anyone who needs to do this for someone else, I think this is the secret - don’t ever think of it as “no big deal.” If you take it seriously every time, it won’t BE a big deal, but if you don’t, you’ll hurt them.
That’s the story. In retrospect, it went entirely by the book, but you never know what’s going to happen. Margaret got really scared in pre-op because the surgeon came in and told her all of the bad things that might happen (she had to – that’s the law) but none did. And we were all amused that the surgeon had to sign Margaret’s belly. She told us that she had to autograph the part that she was going to operate on except for anal surgeries! We all laughed and it broke the tension raised by the possible bad outcomes. Margaret’s biggest fear, I think, was ending up on a ventilator, but her lungs behaved. I promised her that I wouldn’t let that happen (I’m her medical proxy and we talked about that at length when we filled out the paperwork). It was good to do all of the planning; Margaret is good at anticipating things whereas my attitude is, “Life’s what happens when you make plans.”
I learned why they almost always take out at least six inches of colon for this type of surgery, instead of just removing he bit with the polyp; she will cut (and remove) the blood vessel that feeds that part of the colon; the vessel feeds about six inches of colon. If they left some of the colon with no blood vessel to feed it, that chunk of colon would die and rot (infection!), so they take out everything that is feed by the vessel that is removed.
I picked Margaret up yesterday at 4:30 PM at her pulmonologist’s office in Greenfield. We drove down to Springfield and tried to check her into the hospital. Some patients check in the night before surgery for what they call “hotel,” because it is more convenient than arriving at 6 AM. Margaret wasn’t a hotel patient; she is paralyzed on her left side and is diabetic and needed help to do the colon cleansing necessary for today’s surgery. The surgical patient rooms in this hospital date from the 1960s. They are double rooms, with tiny closets and small bathrooms. Need I say that the bathrooms are in no way handicapped accessible? Margaret couldn’t get into the bathroom in the room; the wheelchair wouldn’t go through the door. Even the “accessible” bathroom on the floor wasn’t of any use as the toilet was mounted close to a corner, with grab rails only on the left side. Margaret is paralyzed on her left. Finally, she has rheumatoid arthritis and cannot rise from a low seat. None of the toilets, not even the one in the “accessible” bathroom, had a high enough seat for her to use. The staff offered her a commode but unless one is bolted to the floor, commodes are extremely tippy to one-armed pressure. She fell while using a commode shortly after her stroke, some twenty-odd years ago, and was told to never use one. There is a company that makes a giant plastic spacer that snaps on top of the toilet and is a cheap, temporary way to raise a toilet seat but the hospital doesn’t own any.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was voted into existence by Congress in 1990. It clearly states that medical facilities cannot deny essential services, especially when architectural barriers can easily be overcome with “readily achievable” methods. To my mind, the use of a toilet for someone who can use it is an essential service and requiring her to use a bedpan is a violation of the ADA. How a hospital can get away with such a gross violation I just cannot understand. I hope Margaret kicks up a tremendous fuss. And I think I will, too, as a preemptive strike.
I was very annoyed that the nursing staff didn’t begin her colon cleansing until almost 1 AM. It wasn't entirely their fault; the pharmacy didn't deliver the "Go Lytely" on time, but the staff didn't call for it again (after the initial order at 6 PM) until I made them, around midnight. The surgeon’s instructions were to start the procedure by 6 PM and both Margaret and I were very worried that the surgery might be canceled in the absence of a proper clean-out. I really irritated the nurse by crying out, "Hurray!" when the runner finally came down the hall with the gallon jug as I was preparing to leave. I had stayed to help Margaret; the cleanse is a thoroughly unpleasant procedure, made worse by her needing to use a bedpan. The nurse was quite snippy about the fact that she had been nice enough to allow me to stay late, against hospital policy; she thought I was being sarcastic. I wasn't; I was genuinely happy, even thrilled, that Margaret was finally going to start the clean-out that was the entire reason for our presence that night. She really scolded me, upsetting Margaret. I had to leave since I knew today was going to be a long day. Since she started so late, poor Margaret was still having cramps when I arrived back at 6 AM; she was about to be transported down for pre-op and was still on the bedpan! She finally went into surgery between 7:30 and 8 AM and I came here.
This is a very nice room, with plenty of comfortable chairs, a TV, magazines, a basket of romance novels, and a couple of tables but you are not allowed to eat in here. The cafeteria is next door, however.
I’m tired.
Update on January 6, 2011 – Margaret’s surgery went very well; everything went as planned and she was released five days later in the midst of last-minute preparations for a monster snowstorm (the one that left New York City paralyzed). I drove her home and she has resumed her normal life. I even got home just as the first of the snow was sticking on the road. I hate driving in the snow as my car handles like an ice skate and I’m not a skater. Seriously, my car is horrid in snow. My last car was an all-wheel drive and I got spoiled by its ability to maneuver.
We didn’t kick up the fuss about the lack of a proper toilet in the hospital; in retrospect, we should have, but I was too busy trying to help distract Margaret and solving more immediate problems. Since she wasn’t allowed solids for days after the surgery, she just tolerated a bedpan. I don’t need to tell her story, though. I’m happy to no longer need to give her those horrible injections; the doctor stopped them. I got stressed every time I had to give one because I always wondered if this was going to be the time when I really hurt her. But, for anyone who needs to do this for someone else, I think this is the secret - don’t ever think of it as “no big deal.” If you take it seriously every time, it won’t BE a big deal, but if you don’t, you’ll hurt them.
That’s the story. In retrospect, it went entirely by the book, but you never know what’s going to happen. Margaret got really scared in pre-op because the surgeon came in and told her all of the bad things that might happen (she had to – that’s the law) but none did. And we were all amused that the surgeon had to sign Margaret’s belly. She told us that she had to autograph the part that she was going to operate on except for anal surgeries! We all laughed and it broke the tension raised by the possible bad outcomes. Margaret’s biggest fear, I think, was ending up on a ventilator, but her lungs behaved. I promised her that I wouldn’t let that happen (I’m her medical proxy and we talked about that at length when we filled out the paperwork). It was good to do all of the planning; Margaret is good at anticipating things whereas my attitude is, “Life’s what happens when you make plans.”
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they AREN’T watching you. And Truffles.
Sorry, but I’m in a very serious mood tonight. I’ll try to counteract this unusual state by posting my chocolate truffle recipe at the end. Chocolate can soothe the worst worries. And I had a couple of people ask me for the recipe. Enjoy.
I don’t use most social media. I’m suspicious of those enormous permission statements that you have to grant before you can use their services. The statements are so huge, no one ever reads them and even if you did, they are written in impenetrable legalese. For all I know, they’re asking for the first and second mortgages on my immortal soul. Since I want to keep mine, I don't sign. Since I don't sign, I can't use them.
Have you noticed all of the cameras that have arisen on highways and byways around the country? In Western Massachusetts, towers with camera pods have been erected at every interchange on Interstate 91, the road that runs roughly parallel to the Connecticut River. Who is monitoring these cameras and what is the data being used for? In other states, similar cameras are now used to issue speeding tickets automatically, with recognition software to identify all vehicles by their license plates and computers to calculate the speed of every vehicle as it passes each camera site.
I was going to say that this smacks of Big Brother, but it isn’t merely something close to Orwell’s ubiquitous state monitoring of its citizens, this is EXACTLY what is now occurring on our highways! Big Brother is now amongst us.
Walk down any commercial area and look up. I’ll bet you’ll spot cameras. Don’t scratch inappropriately; someone will have it recorded.
I’ve got discount cards for a number of local stores and I get junk mail that fits my purchase history; the devil in me wants to use someone else’s card and use it to get a discount when I buy something really naughty.
I use Costco for some of my prescription drugs; I get letters, paid for by the drug companies, reminding me when my inhaler should be running low.
Despite my refusing all cookies on my computer, my virus checker finds and destroys a couple of tracking cookies every few days. If the Constitution grants the right to freedom from illegal search and seizure and the police aren’t allowed to gather certain information without a search warrant, why can companies collect that same information and sell it to anyone, including the police?
I don’t think I’m paranoid but I am very nervous about all of the types of information that are collected about me all of the time. Note that I have no problem with the federal census; I’ve used census data in my work and I know the ground rules. It’s all of the other groups that are gathering information that make me cringe.
They’re watching you. And me, too.
CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES
Regular batch BIG batch
1 1/3 c. heavy cream 1 qt. heavy cream
14 oz. semisweet chocolate*, chopped 2.6 lbs chocolate
1/4 lb. unsalted butter, softened 3/4 lb. unsalted butter
1 t. real vanilla 1 T. real vanilla
1 c. cocoa 2 c. cocoa
1/2 lb. (more or less) semisweet chocolate for coating > 2 lb. chocolate
vegetable shortening (Crisco, NOT margarine) 1/2 c? Crisco
* I prefer to use a high quality chocolate in bar form, such as Callibaut or Guittard, but good chocolate chips (NOT Nestles’) will also work. I buy a giant bag of chocolate chips at Costco when I can’t get a ten pound bar at Williams-Sonoma. Much to my surprise, I discovered that grocery store-brand real chocolate chips taste much better than Nestles’.
Bring cream to boil but do not allow it to scorch. Remove from heat, add chocolate, stir until smooth (a wire wisk may be necessary). Stir in butter, blend well. Add vanilla last, after the mixture has cooled somewhat. Chill in refrigerator at least 2 hours.
Remove chocolate mixture from refrigerator, and, using a teaspoon or small scoop, gently extract a creamy glob. You should skim your tool across the surface of the mixture rather than dig down into the solid mass. Drop globs onto waxed paper. Freeze at least 2 hours.
Put cocoa in a bowl. Take a glob of chocolate mixture, roll it in cocoa to coat, then quickly roll the coated glob between your hands to form a ball. Act quickly, or the stuff will melt all over your hands. Place on waxed paper. When all are rolled, freeze again until hard (at least a couple of hours).
Melt chocolate for coating in the top of a double boiler. You will need to add some shortening, but the amount varies with the humidity. Try beginning with 1tablespoon. The problem with adding too much shortening is that the chocolate will not want to re-harden. Too little, and the chocolate will stiffen with the increasing amount of cocoa from dipping and will not form a smooth coating over the balls. You must use a vegetable shortening such as Crisco as butter, margarine, or any kind of oil will ruin the coating mixture. Take about 1/3 of the balls out of the freezer. One at a time, drop them into the chocolate, flip rapidly to coat the entire ball, then remove the ball with the flat tines of a fork. Bounce the now-dripping ball gently onto the surface of the melted chocolate to allow surface tension to remove the excess coating, and slide the coated ball carefully onto waxed paper. Try to not leave any weird fork-marks. When finished with the first 1/3 of the balls, place the finished truffles in the freezer, reheat the coating chocolate and add more shortening, as needed. Stir until smooth, and repeat with next two batches. Freeze leftover chocolate for next time. Store finished truffles in refrigerator (cream is the main ingredient....) or freezer.
You can place the finished truffles in tiny paper muffin liners, wrap them individually in mylar paper, or store a bunch in a pretty tin. I’ve done them all. I’ve also tried adding various liquors to the interior mixture for different flavors. If you want to add liquor, increase the amount of chocolate chips, slightly decrease the butter, and add the liquor in place of the vanilla. You can’t add much liquid without changing the balance of chocolate; the mixture won’t harden. Experiment!
I take several days to make my truffles, waiting until my next free block of time to start the next step after a chill cycle. This way, I’m never waiting impatiently for chocolate to harden.
Yield: Regular batch: 60 small truffles. Big batch - enough good-sized truffles to give to family and neighbors for holidays. Maybe leave an offering for Big Brother, too. It can't hurt.
I don’t use most social media. I’m suspicious of those enormous permission statements that you have to grant before you can use their services. The statements are so huge, no one ever reads them and even if you did, they are written in impenetrable legalese. For all I know, they’re asking for the first and second mortgages on my immortal soul. Since I want to keep mine, I don't sign. Since I don't sign, I can't use them.
Have you noticed all of the cameras that have arisen on highways and byways around the country? In Western Massachusetts, towers with camera pods have been erected at every interchange on Interstate 91, the road that runs roughly parallel to the Connecticut River. Who is monitoring these cameras and what is the data being used for? In other states, similar cameras are now used to issue speeding tickets automatically, with recognition software to identify all vehicles by their license plates and computers to calculate the speed of every vehicle as it passes each camera site.
I was going to say that this smacks of Big Brother, but it isn’t merely something close to Orwell’s ubiquitous state monitoring of its citizens, this is EXACTLY what is now occurring on our highways! Big Brother is now amongst us.
Walk down any commercial area and look up. I’ll bet you’ll spot cameras. Don’t scratch inappropriately; someone will have it recorded.
I’ve got discount cards for a number of local stores and I get junk mail that fits my purchase history; the devil in me wants to use someone else’s card and use it to get a discount when I buy something really naughty.
I use Costco for some of my prescription drugs; I get letters, paid for by the drug companies, reminding me when my inhaler should be running low.
Despite my refusing all cookies on my computer, my virus checker finds and destroys a couple of tracking cookies every few days. If the Constitution grants the right to freedom from illegal search and seizure and the police aren’t allowed to gather certain information without a search warrant, why can companies collect that same information and sell it to anyone, including the police?
I don’t think I’m paranoid but I am very nervous about all of the types of information that are collected about me all of the time. Note that I have no problem with the federal census; I’ve used census data in my work and I know the ground rules. It’s all of the other groups that are gathering information that make me cringe.
They’re watching you. And me, too.
CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES
Regular batch BIG batch
1 1/3 c. heavy cream 1 qt. heavy cream
14 oz. semisweet chocolate*, chopped 2.6 lbs chocolate
1/4 lb. unsalted butter, softened 3/4 lb. unsalted butter
1 t. real vanilla 1 T. real vanilla
1 c. cocoa 2 c. cocoa
1/2 lb. (more or less) semisweet chocolate for coating > 2 lb. chocolate
vegetable shortening (Crisco, NOT margarine) 1/2 c? Crisco
* I prefer to use a high quality chocolate in bar form, such as Callibaut or Guittard, but good chocolate chips (NOT Nestles’) will also work. I buy a giant bag of chocolate chips at Costco when I can’t get a ten pound bar at Williams-Sonoma. Much to my surprise, I discovered that grocery store-brand real chocolate chips taste much better than Nestles’.
Bring cream to boil but do not allow it to scorch. Remove from heat, add chocolate, stir until smooth (a wire wisk may be necessary). Stir in butter, blend well. Add vanilla last, after the mixture has cooled somewhat. Chill in refrigerator at least 2 hours.
Remove chocolate mixture from refrigerator, and, using a teaspoon or small scoop, gently extract a creamy glob. You should skim your tool across the surface of the mixture rather than dig down into the solid mass. Drop globs onto waxed paper. Freeze at least 2 hours.
Put cocoa in a bowl. Take a glob of chocolate mixture, roll it in cocoa to coat, then quickly roll the coated glob between your hands to form a ball. Act quickly, or the stuff will melt all over your hands. Place on waxed paper. When all are rolled, freeze again until hard (at least a couple of hours).
Melt chocolate for coating in the top of a double boiler. You will need to add some shortening, but the amount varies with the humidity. Try beginning with 1tablespoon. The problem with adding too much shortening is that the chocolate will not want to re-harden. Too little, and the chocolate will stiffen with the increasing amount of cocoa from dipping and will not form a smooth coating over the balls. You must use a vegetable shortening such as Crisco as butter, margarine, or any kind of oil will ruin the coating mixture. Take about 1/3 of the balls out of the freezer. One at a time, drop them into the chocolate, flip rapidly to coat the entire ball, then remove the ball with the flat tines of a fork. Bounce the now-dripping ball gently onto the surface of the melted chocolate to allow surface tension to remove the excess coating, and slide the coated ball carefully onto waxed paper. Try to not leave any weird fork-marks. When finished with the first 1/3 of the balls, place the finished truffles in the freezer, reheat the coating chocolate and add more shortening, as needed. Stir until smooth, and repeat with next two batches. Freeze leftover chocolate for next time. Store finished truffles in refrigerator (cream is the main ingredient....) or freezer.
You can place the finished truffles in tiny paper muffin liners, wrap them individually in mylar paper, or store a bunch in a pretty tin. I’ve done them all. I’ve also tried adding various liquors to the interior mixture for different flavors. If you want to add liquor, increase the amount of chocolate chips, slightly decrease the butter, and add the liquor in place of the vanilla. You can’t add much liquid without changing the balance of chocolate; the mixture won’t harden. Experiment!
I take several days to make my truffles, waiting until my next free block of time to start the next step after a chill cycle. This way, I’m never waiting impatiently for chocolate to harden.
Yield: Regular batch: 60 small truffles. Big batch - enough good-sized truffles to give to family and neighbors for holidays. Maybe leave an offering for Big Brother, too. It can't hurt.
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