When It Rains, It Pours

There's a lot of stuff to cover, and I'm going on memory, so there may be some jumble and omissions -

The week prior to 04 JULY, Anna had a Trans-metatarsal Amputation, and spent about a week in hospital. She was discharged on 03 JULY and because there was no radiation therapy scheduled for The Fourth, we decided to come home.

We weren't even in the door when she lost her balance and out of instinct, stepped down on her freshly amputated left foot. Things immediately went FUBAR from there. An infection set up in her foot and by Thursday evening there was a foul odor coming from her foot. Dr. Foot worked her in between procedures on Friday and had her admitted and took her to the O.R. @ 0200 SAT to open the foot back up and clean out the infection.

Fortunately they only had to remove a small amount of tissue, so given proper care, she'll still have enough foot to walk on. The end of her foot is open, so I have to clean it out an change the dressing and give her Weapons Grade antibiotics via I.V. infusion twice a day in addition to an oral antibiotic 3X/day.

During that week we checked into and out of our hotel daily, so I was lugging luggage around and loading and unloading the wheel chair and generally straining my improperly healed kidney without giving it a chance to heal between exertions, so I wound up blowing a gasket.

BACKSTORY - For those who don't know, 2 years ago I had a Stage 2 Renal Cell Carcinoma, Clear Cell Type removed from my right kidney. In order to get clear margins, i.e. make sure they got all the tumor out, they removed about 1/4 of my kidney. But for some reason it didn't heal properly and every time I'd exert myself, I'd wind up passing blood and/or clots in my urine. But in a couple of days of taking it easy it would clear up.

This time it didn't have time to clear up, and proceeded to get worse to the point that the urine I was passing looked like bloody cottage cheese and I passed out in my S.I.L.'s truck and woke up in the E.R. of Barnes. I was informed that I needed a procedure to go in and close off the bleeders, or things would get worse on down the line.

While every emotional fiber of my being screamed that I needed to be on the 7th floor taking care of Anna, my Inner Vulcan told me this was the most logical time to have the procedure done because there were people to care for Anna while I was down and if I didn't do it and if this happened again at home...

As they say in Ebonics - We both be fucked. (My inner Vulcan is bi-lingual..)

So Logic kicked Emotion's ass and I agree to the procedure.

After a battery of tests I get an incision in my groin and a catheter fed up into my kidney. Shoot some dye in there, see where the bleeders are and close them off, and VOILA`, I'm down to 1.5 kidneys and not bleeding anymore. And I'm not supposed to lift anything heavier than the TV remote or a beer, or I could lose the other half of my kidney.

Damn the luck. I guess I'll have to hire a trash flunky, and a lawn mower flunky and a......

So anyway, We get out last Friday, 13 JULY, good thing I don't have Triskaidekaphobia, spent the weekend at home and have been going back and forth to The Wizard of Rads MON-THUR this week and internal radiation today. Now back home for a weekend of being lazy bums.

So I think that about sums up the last month. Sorry I haven't been more diligent in updating, but I've barely been on The Net at all recently...

When you are up to your ass in alligators, the last thing you remember is that you went in to drain the swamp...