Don't Go to the Doctor

(Initially published as a story of facebook.)

Feeling nerve pain in my left shoulder, arm and hand, enough discomfort to prevent sleep, I paid a visit to the walk-in clinic. That was August 2022.

The initial guess - there was a pinched nerve in my neck, likely because I made the mistake of mentioning I had bonked my head standing up under a tree limb. (It's usually not a good idea to plant seeds like that.) As is common for people my age, X-rays did show a narrowed gap around C5. That and the "bonk" did make the pinched nerve at the neck seem plausible, so I went with a prescribed regimen of PT at their facility, along with a cascade of Prednisone. After several weeks of that, I felt stronger and more flexible in my upper body, and the night-0time pain was alleviated, so all seemed good.

Unfortunately, exactly in step with the ending of the Prednisone cascade, the initial problem returned. Note that all this time I had no actual diagnosis because, as one of my MD consultants put it, Tallahassee is underserved in neurologists. Meaning, there aren't enough of them. I had been on a waiting list to see one since the initial visit.

Finally, in early December, I got the call. Diagnosis: classic carpal tunnel pinching. Easily fixed with arthroscopic surgery done with local anesthesia. SIGN ME UP!

Just one little hurdle, due to my age any surgery, even this minor procedure, can't be scheduled until my main guy signs off on it. A kind of permission slip. No problem, I thought.

Well, everything looked good, as I expected. But, since I hadn't done an EKG in 10 years, in the interest of thoroughness, they harnessed me up. The caregiver took the printout away, but returned saying it was a bit fuzzy so they wanted another one. (I thought, here we go.) She came back and said they wanted a 3rd confirmatory reading. After looking that one over, she returned with the news that I was, at that very moment, in Atrial Fibrillation. I'm thinking, why don't you have paddles in hand?

Turns out, one can have "afib", to use the friendly nickname, with no symptoms, including not hearing anything abnormal via stethoscope.

So I'm immediately put on "blood thinners" and sent off to see the "electric heart guy", who, apparently can't be the same as my previous cardiologist who does only "general" cardiology. Electric heart guy wants to run 2 tests (echo cardiogram and stress EKG) followed by a shock treatment.

I know some of you are thinking, it's about time they fixed that old SOBs brain, but you're wrong. This is essentially the paddles, done while put under for a few minutes because "it is very painful". I asked if it was more painful than being tazed, the answer is "it's different" - devoid of the information I was seeking.

Well, finally, on Valentines Day, I went in to TMH and got all that done. I passed the two tests, with only one casualty being my right foot, and the shock treatment flipped the ole ticker out of afib ... for the present. I'm told by everyone from Dr to custodial staff that I can slip back into afib at any time. I asked, how will I know? There doesn't seem to be a definitive answer, but I'm advised to check my pulse regularly.

So, now, I'm hoping to be cleared to get the carpal tunnel procedure and with luck cure the original complaint.

RE: the right foot - when I was wheeled in concentric circles and up and down various elevators without being informed as to the reason or destination, I ended up at the stress EKG facility - a treadmill. With my shoes still far far away at my cubby which I would not be able to find in hours of searching. Using the treadmill vigorously, barefooted, stressed my right plantar facia, and I'm hoping I can nurse it back to health in a few weeks.

PS: In no way is this story intended to reflect poorly on any of my physicians or other medical personnel. I hold all of them in high esteem and am quite fond of those I've known for a while.

Bad Day for 98.6

Tuesday, June 23, 2020. Woke up to this scene:

Top of a pine blown off by last night's storm and tossed across our drive. No big deal. Tree work has been going on steadily for several weeks, I can take care of this in no time. It's such a simple job I won't bother to put on my boots. Run get the tractor w fork lift, powersaw, and woodsman bag and get to it.


Well, after sawing up the trunk and limbs into length I was loading the last round and noticed I had missed sawing off one limb from the trunk. So I jumped off the tractor, grabbed my ax, with heavy gloves still on, and started to lop off the limb. Something slipped in the forks and a pine branch jumped out and bit my arm. Now I'm pissed off at the tree. So I took an ill-advised swing at the limb.

Recap: (1) no boots, (2) heavy (awkward) gloves plus sweat, (3) poor concentration on fundamentals. That is three strikes. Bam:

It doesn't take much with an ax. A modest swing carries a lot of momentum, and of course I like to keep tools sharp. The only, ONLY, defense is to keep body parts (your and other's) up-vector from the direction of force of the ax. In my haste and loss of cool (temperature and temperament) I did not follow that rule.

Literally, after 70 years of axmanship initiated by my father, my first ax injury. Sorry Dad, I knew better. I'm still a work in progress.

This photo was taken in the front yard. That's Michelle's arm (a friend) holding the leg up while I'm pulling on a make-shift tourniquet (old belt). Kathy was on the phone guiding the EMTs in. They estimated I spewed out more than a liter of blood. (They said one and a half, but I was still conscious, so maybe a little less.)

The EMTs arrive and took over - cut off what's left of the sneaker, took one look, and applied their real tourniquet. (It was a CAT Tourniquet, the kind I've been meaning to acquire ...). That's an EMT holding up my leg, the red tag on the CAT is barely visible on my thigh.

The rest is straightforward - trip to the ER with #trauma, immediate service, got some blood and other fluids, stitches, etc., home before noon.

No tendons, ligaments, or major arteries cut - most of the bleeding was from veins, maybe a small spurter.

About 48 hours later, it looks good. Still sore! Keep it clean and dry.

Lessons to re-learn:

1. If you work with woodsman/woodswoman tools, you should always wear safety equipment and have at least two IFAK items handy at all times: A tourniquet and a quick-clot bandage.

2. You are never too experienced to have an accident.

3. If you have an accident involving heavy bleeding, it is an emergency that you will not survive without immediate first aid. Carry, and learn to use, your tourniquet.

My heart and condolences go out once again to the family of the woodsman from North Carolina who cut himself in the top of a tree here in Tallahassee while helping the locals recover from Hurricane Michael. He severed an artery in his leg and could not get out of the tree before bleeding to death. My understanding is that he did not have a tourniquet in the tree with him.

Weezie

May 24 at 10:28 PM · 

Weezie Lacher
August 11, 2004 - May 23, 2018

Weezie was born Drafting Design, of parents Dodgem By Design (dad) and Eastside Romp (mom), on August 11, 2004. She was raised as a professional racing greyhound. Her racing career ended with early retirement from the Jefferson County (Florida) Kennel Club in 2007 due in part to an injury whose scars remained with her always. She was subsequently adopted by a family that was unable to take responsibility for her and re-adopted by Chris and Kathy Lacher in the spring of 2008. She crossed over to the eternally happy family life on May 23, 2018.

Weezie was a delicate, gracious, loving, and impeccably mannered lady. And she could run like the wind. She loved her home life with her adoptive younger brother Beau, her younger feline cousins Louis II and Cleo II, and all of her greater human family.

Sweet dreams dear Weezie. We all love and miss you.

Rod Creagh

Rod Creagh

With deep sadness topped off with many fond memories, I bid farewell to my old friend and brother-in-law, Rod Creagh.

Rod was a truly great man. Professionally he was an oral surgeon of extraordinary skill. From the mundane (he extracted all of my wisdom teeth) to the heroic (repairing the obliterated lower face of a pretty UGA coed to like-new), he never turned away a patient. Farm-to-table gifts were not uncommon, in lieu of cash.

Rod was also a musician. He organized a "garage" blue-grass band, “True Grass”, in Athens, he wrote songs (one of which, famously, was recorded by both the CW singer Mickey Gilley and the jazzman Mose Allison), and after retirement he formed "3-Wire Music", a music publishing company, in Nashville. Many wonderful family evenings have been spent listening, chatting, and singing along with Rod.

The phrase "3-wire" comes from his days as a US Navy fighter pilot. Four arresting cables, or "wires", are on the flight deck to snag the tail hook on a plane as it lands, the third being the optimal wire. Rod once had the third wire rip the tail hook and lower fuel drain system out of his F4D Skyray, sending the plane off the front of the USS Shangri-La. He ejected just in time.

I have had many wonderful travels with Rod. We rode several TOSRV-Souths together, and even a couple of the TOSRV Tuneups many of us did back in the day. We did Mt. Mitchell a few times and the 6-Gap more than I can tally. We rode several week-long bicycle tours, including Ride Across Arizona (twice) and Peddle the Peaks in New Mexico and Colorado. We competed together in whitewater canoe races on the Nantahala and spent a week bringing a yacht from Cincinnati to Mobile (via the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, Tombigbie, Black Warrior, and Alabama rivers, using the Tenn-Tom waterway to get over the divide from Lake Pickwick to the Tombigbie).

Rod was always there to help and believed in going out of his way for family and friendships. While my Mom was living with us, Rod made it a ritual to visit and go out with us for "Tex-Mex", one of Mom's favorites. (Well, that and the Margueritas.)

The passing of great friends like Rod leaves holes in life that cannot be filled. We can only cover them with steel and live the new, diminished version.

Fare well my friend.

Swim Meets

It's been a while since I was involved with competitive swimming, and like everything else, the systems have been fine tuned and enhanced with information technology. It's really impressive what a group of mostly volunteers can pull off. Case in point:

The "Muppet Meet" last Sat. This was a regional meet for 8 and under kids:

• 15 teams
• 281 swimmers
• 890 individual entries
• Grouped by age [4-6, 7, 8] and gender [boys & girls] for a total of 28 events each with 4-6 heats of up to 8 swimmers per heat. 
• Approximately 150 heats
• Venue: Amphi High School Pool, Tucson

The heats are wham-bam, about 10 seconds apart. The meet is pre-organized using recorded best time for each swimmer, with heats from 1 (slowest) to 5 or 6 (fastest). The volunteers have to get their swimmers in the right heat and lane and ready to get on the blocks. It's controlled chaos, but nobody missed a designated slot! The attached link shows a few shots of the pool. It's a really nice facility at a local high school - full Olympic pool with timeing sensor boards, so the humans operating the two stop watches per lane are the backup.  

https://goo.gl/photos/FFyTD3fwWT2P5ZVc6

Note the two shots of a matrix of 8yo girls sitting on a grid. The grid organizes an entire event by heat and lane, a big help in getting the kids to the right block at the right time. Mikaela is in these grids peeking at the camera. Two sets of volunteers work the grid. one set is in charge of seating the kids at the correct matrix coordinate, another group moves them out by heat to the starting blocks. There are separate grids for boys and girls, so that one grid is being sent to the blocks while the other is being filled. The team coaches make sure their swimmers are at the grid in a timely manner.

Event results are ready to print and post within a few seconds after the last heat of the event.

BTW: I'm "awash" in swimming: 8 practices and 4 meets in 10 days. Plus I did some recreational swimming today after practice.

Go Marlins!

Barred Owl Postscript

The wing was shattered, the shoulder crushed. It was determined that survival would be possible only with a terrible quality of life. Barry was euthanized. He died peacefully.

Barred Owl

Today, 4:00am, I happened to be walking my neighbor's paper to her front porch, accompanied by Beauregard. He quietly approached a shadowy unknown object - and I heard the unmistakable CLACK of an owl beak. (If you have ever heard a mature owl do that, you know the sound. If you haven't, just know that it is menacingly loud, the equivalent of a ferocious growl from a canine. No creature wants to get near that beak after hearing it.)

I turned on my hand light, which I carry only "in case", preferring natural light. It was a mature Barred Owl with a sagging wing. Hurt and afraid, but not about to show it or give up.

I went home to think through what to do and get my equipment:

• Large cardboard box - cut two air vents in it
• Thick towel
• Welding gloves (the manly substitute for oven mitts at the grill)

Checked the St Francis web site, woke up Kathy and asked her to drive the car over to the neighbor's, and went back to get the owl. He had moved up to the front porch. With Kathy holding my light, I put the towel gently over him, amid ferocious clacking, and managed to get him in the box and thence into the car.

Called Northwood Animal Hospital [24/7 emergency animal care], which is the after-hours intake for St-Francis, to alert I was bring in an injured barred owl. They are only about two miles from us, yet by the time I got there the Leon Co Deputy who does the transport to St Francis was already there waiting for me. She was expert. Took "Barry" out of the box (with gloves of course) by the talons, got him calmed down, and looked over the injured wing. Several broken bones, some protruding. So sad. I had been thinking car, but she thought more likely a collision with a window. They promised to let me know - possibilities range from setting to amputation to, unfortunately, euthanasia.

This is undoubtedly one of the mated pair that lives in our immediate neighborhood and sings duets in the evening. I requested that if this one can be fully rehab'd that we release it back here. 

(Back home reading the paper at 7:00am.)

(See previous post "Owal Rescue", July 2012.)