Health Issues

In a way, this issue is kind of hard to write about.  I have tried several times.  It comes out sounding like clinical play-by-play of everything that happened to me - a medical log, as it were.  I think I am going to skip that and write what it did to me.  And that is the hard part.

But once I get that out, then I can start writing about other things.  But I have to say it, because it has been such an important part of my experience - on my life, on my esteem, on my marriages.

The short version - I had to leave the fair circuit early and fly home from Montana in August.  The intense lifestyle of a carnie was not good on my foot - again.  When I started the season, my foot was healed.  By the time I left, the diabetic ulcer on the pad of my foot had ripped open again and was soaking through my bandages, through my socks and filling my shoe with blood on a nightly basis.  I didn't want to risk serious infection, so I bit back my machismo, admitted that I couldn't hack it and took a flight from Missoula back to Phoenix.

The doctors tried everything to heal it.  They tried to trim back the thick callus with a scalpel, as this was what was preventing the hole in my foot from closing up.  It worked once.  It didn't work this time.  They put me under and sutured it up.  When they removed the stitches, they didn't take.  My foot was filleted open like a brown trout.  They sent me home that way.

Two weeks later, my foot ballooned up with infection - infection that went all the way to the bone.  They rushed me into surgery, opened up my foot again, irrigated out the infection, and chipped away the rotted pieces of bone.

They installed a beautiful piece of equipment called a wound vac.  Essentially, this is a piece of sponge shoved in my wound and sealed airtight with a plastic bandage.  A hose emerges from the bandage to a little vacuum that sucks moisture out of the wound providing the proper environment to allow tissue to knit at a much fast rate.

And since I had infection in the bone, they installed a PICC line (permanent IV site) on my upper right arm, and every four hours they fed me the most vile antibiotic fluid called vancomycin.  Vanco is toxic - literally.  It burns out your veins, and if you are not careful it will burn out your kidneys, too.  I don't know what it is like to go through chemo, but I imagine vanco is a little like it.  It makes you exhausted, dizzy, moody, nauseous, etc.

I spent a week in the hospital, and they discharged me on Thanksgiving evening.  I went home to have Thanksgiving dinner with my family, got hooked up to my IV and threw up all of of my dinner.

They put me on Home Health, which meant that a nurse would come to my house every other day to check on me.  They would take my vitals, change the bandages on my foot and my PICC line.  They helped alot.  But it was actually Temple that did most of the work.

Temple cleaned out our spare bedroom and got it ready for me.  It was closer to the bathroom, so I wouldn't have to walk so far on crutches.  She was the one who changed out my IVs.  I had to have someone connect my IV every 8 hours.  She would connect me, and I would experience three hours of nausea and dizziness while the fluids went into me.  Then she would have to disconnect me.

She was driving home from her job on her lunch break to connect my IV.  She was racing home to disconnect me.

You might ask - a man with two wives, why is he placing all of the burden on one wife?  That's a good question.  I have asked that myself.  But at the beginning, Temple insisted that she was going to be the one to change out my IV.  She is extremely efficient, and she has had medical training.  She eventually grew to detest this duty.  I shouldn't have let it happen.

Temple was there for me to do all of the physical care, but she was especially there for all of the emotional support.  Allow me to explain.

One month, I am working.  The next month, I am not working.  I have been in situations before where I have been out of work.  But now, I can't even walk.  I am confined to a bedroom that becomes a prison.  I am chained to the wall with an IV tube.  I can hear the laughter and carrying-on of my family outside of the door, but I can't join them.  I am feeling sick.  But most of the day, I am alone.  Everyone goes about their duties.  Temple goes to work.  Martha has her errands.  I am at home.  Alone.  With my dark thoughts.

Later, Temple said that something about this sickness changed me.  Something about being hooked to the IVs.  I think that she is right.  I became very insecure.  I became jealous of Temple's time at work and her co-workers.  I could see what a burden it was on her to run back and forth, taking care of me.  Work was a place that became enjoyable for her, and home life became stressful - coming home to a moody, surly husband.

I can see now how hard it was on her.  But then all I could think about was myself.  For the first time in my life, I experienced depression.  Oh yes, I have had the occasional bout of melancholy.  But I had never experienced depression until now.  I would watch Temple get into the car to go to work, watch the car back down the driveway and head down the dirt road, leaving me alone.  Then I would  burst into uncontrollable fits of crying.  I had also never experienced any kind of marital strife until this moment.  Before this, I had been a big, dumb, happy-go-lucky man who stumbled through life, always able to take care of his family, always taking for granted what wonderful wives he had.  But then I pushed them away to the point where I actually realized that I could lose them.  And nothing was ever the same after that.

A couple of weeks after being home, I started to develop a terrible rash.  The doctor wanted to prolong going off of the antibiotic until I could get full benefit from it.  Finally, I was beet red all over, and my whole body was swollen.  They took me off of the vanco, and they pulled the PICC line out of my arm.

For the next several weeks, I peeled.  At first, it was like a sunburn peeling.  Then I was pulling skin off of my body in sheets.

But the wound vac worked.  My wound had sealed up, and all that remained of the gaping hole in my foot was the smallest of slits.  The Home Health nurses stopped coming, and I started my life in recovery.

Several days after they pulled the PICC line out of my arm, I woke up one morning to find my entire left arm purple, swollen and cold to the touch.  Tears came to my eyes.  I knew from experience what this was. This was a blood clot caused by the PICC line, an upper extremity DVT.  I went into the doctor, and there was basically nothing they could do about it but keep me on blood thinners.

On Christmas Eve, I went to the store to do some last minute shopping for the wives.  The pain in my arm and chest was so intense that I literally thought I was going to die.  It took all of my focus to get my shopping done and go out to the car.  The next day, Christmas, I woke up in the afternoon from a nap, and the pain was so intense that I sat on the couch and cried.  (Yes, I did alot of crying in this time perdiod.)

The pain gradually became bearable as the blood found ways to get through my arm.  My doctor said that I will likely  have this DVT all of my life, and that, as long as it doesn't affect the quality of my life, I should be fine.  The foot also was fine.  I was able to walk again.

But the dark moods, the depression, the feelings of worthlessness, the fighting with my wife - none of that abated.  That continued for months and months.

At the end of January, I was alarmed to see the ulcer begin to open up again on the bottom of my foot.  The doctor kept an eye on it, but then he moved and I was left without care.  I began treating my wound every day the way I used to before any of the surgeries.  But at the beginning of this month, I started to get a fever.  I noticed that my foot was swelling again, so I went to the ER.  My foot was infected again.  They X-rayed it; the infection had not reached the bone, but they put me on antibiotics.  The swelling went down while I was on the antibiotics.

But two days after I went off of the meds, the swelling returned.  I went to see my new doctor, and he was very concerned the moment he saw my foot.  This was last Friday.  He wanted to put me in for surgery later that afternoon.  He looked at my second toe.  The infection was very red and angry around that toe, and he told me that he was probably going to have to take off that toe.

I went home to get my things together.  There were a couple of hours until the procedure.  I stared at my toe.  Probably, I would wake up without it.  It didn't seem fair.  But I had to laugh at the whole situation.  I got into my wife's drawer and found some pink nail polish.  I pained the toenail pink.  If they were going to cut off my toe, they were going to have a chuckle at finding that toenail painted pink.  It was my way of coping.

I went in for surgery.  They lay me on the operating table and administered the anesthesia.  As I went under, I felt a hot wind blowing over my body as if blowing something away.

I found myself standing beneath blue skies.  There was a beautiful desert landscape surrounding me, complete with red rocks.  My wife Temple was standing with me.

Then I woke up to the OR nurse telling me, "We're done."

I had never dreamed while under anesthesia before.

The good news was - I kept my toe.  My foot was very infected.  But none of it had reached the bone.  I was in such good spirits.  I stayed at the hospital for a few days, and, as I write this, I am at home, off of my feet, wearing another wound vac.  A Home Health nurse just left my house just a few minutes ago.

But the strange thing about this is - my depression is gone.  I have been positive and in better spirits since then.  Some may mark this off as coincidence, but I don't think so.

This dark chapter of my life started with anesthesia, going into surgery.  And it ended with another episode of anesthesia.  It was like I lost something when I went under that time, and gained it back when I came out of it.  It may seem crazy.  But I really think that there is something to it.

I don't know what the future will hold.  If you logically examine the process of diabetes, then my prognosis for the future doesn't look good.  But that doesn't matter.  I lived my life in darkness for a few months.  I refuse to do it again.  I will be happy no matter what.  I will be positive, no matter the outcome.  And I will love my wives no matter what they think of me.  Both of them helped me tremendously.  I thank them for that.

But it was Temple who sacrificed so much to take care of me.  It was Temple who bore the brunt of my depression and shed many tears because of cruel things I said.

I just can't help but remember my dream - red rocks in the desert, and Temple standing before me, the wind blowing in her hair...

Surgery & Census

So the event that had most impact on me this year was the DVT (blood clot in my left leg). They gave me some really sexy compression stockings that really made me feel like a woman and had me on meds.

When none of these worked and it became evident that the clot was travelling up my leg, they decided to try the "aggressive treatment", as they termed it. This involved an outpatient procedure of sticking a wire through my vein, breaking up the clot, and sucking it out. Then they would go through my groin (ouch!), install a filter in my vein that would prevent any clots from travelling to my heart or lungs.

I was really nervous about this procedure. Seven years previous, I had a procedure that had required me to be put out. When I came out of the procedure, I was trying to be funny with the nurses. Temple said that my version of "funny" was really vulgar. As a result, I have a deep phobia of - not surgery - but anesthesia.

The doctors assured me that I would be awake and able to function during the procedure.

"Will I be coherent?" I asked.

"Yes, but you won't care," they answered.

They rolled me into the room, administered the anesthesia, and it was kind of pleasant. I just kind of kicked back and made chit-chat with the surgeons. I even napped a while, snoring softly. When they wheeled me back into the recovery room, Martha was waiting for me. I made morew chit-chat with the nurse. I talked a little bit about Temple. Later, Martha told me, "I can't believe that you talked about Temple!"

I told her, "I never mentioned who Temple was, though."

Recovery was a slow process. My legs were still swollen and stiff. I had a enormous, purple bruise on my inner thigh where they had inserted the screen. But I started to get better.

Two weeks after my surgery, I got a phone call from Census Bureau, offering me a job. Since I had no other prospects (a hotel job in Tennesse had fallen through), I accepted. I had done three of the four major phases of the Census 2000, ao I kind of knew what to expect. Training proved that the job was basically the same as I remembered it.

Basically, I loved the job. Imagine cruising down dirt roads through Arizona's beautiful backcountry - Greer, Springerville, Eagar, Vernon, St. Johns and Concho. These are the areas I worked. It was totally enjoyable - except for a few things.

Being a Census Bureau employee during the Obama Administration was much different than ten years ago. People treated you like you were Obama himself knocking at your door. People did not want to cooperate, refused to answer questions, slammed doors in your face, told you how much they hated the government. One worker even received death threats.

And when these people refused to cooperate, the Bureau would send you out to them again.

At one point, a Census representative from D.C. came out to Arizona, and she was going to be riding with a worker. My supervisor put her with me.

"I want you to take her down the roughest roads possible," he said. "I want you to find the meanest people and possibly have a gun pulled on you. I want you to show her what it is we deal with out here."

.

So they put the Census Rep with me. She was a smart, pretty twentysomething right out of college. I bounced her around down 20 miles of dirt road to a homestead I had found. I was sure the people did not want to be found. It turned out the people were friendly.

.

The only problem with working Census not money. I got paid well. The mileage reimbursement was also good. But I beat the heck up outof my car. Those dirt roads were not kind on a sedan. My car went into the shop twice - once with a punctured transmission pan, and again with a damaged fuel pump. I think I'm still paying for car issues that originate with my stint with Census Bureau.

.

I worked for the Bureau until July. I quit when it was time to go on the fair circuit again, which is what I will write about tomorrow...

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Slow Recovery

So after I got back from Montana, I spent an entire week on my back, trying to recover from DVT, or having a blood clot in my calf.

I went to the doctor, and he took a blood sample to see how thin my blood is. Then he instructed me to stay off of my leg as much as possible.

Within a couple of days, the swelling went down. It seemed as if the swelling acted as some sort of barrier to the pain. Because as soon as the swelling went down, the pain increased. It was almost more than I could stand. The doctor had instructed me to only take over the counter ibuprofen. I was downing a cummulative 1200mg a day. Also, I was sleeping several times during the day. It seemed like sleep helped with the pain.

A week later, I was not feeling well, but the next event was upon me - the Coconino County Fair in Flagstaff, Arizona for the Labor Day weekend.

I was pleased to see my Muslim friend Ali there. I was also pleased that my friend Joy, whom I have known since high school, allowed me to stay at her home. Having a comfortable bed to go to after work helped.

The fair in Flagstaff was busy (but rainy). I sat behind the booth in a camp chair, with my leg propped on a pillow while I took orders. But leg started swelling up again anyway.

On Sunday, my wives and some of my younger children made the two hour drive to the fair. While I worked, they had a fun time at the fair. We also had a fun time visiting with my friend Joy and her husband, and we took the long drive home the next morning to see some other dear friends in the Verde Valley (and introduced them to Temple for the first time.)

The next day, the swelling had spread up my thigh. It was all the driving. After consulting with my doctor, I made a tough call. I was due to leave the next morning for the Utah State Fair. That was a ten day event. But the weekend in Flagstaff showed me that, even with my leg propped up, my leg was going to swell as long as I worked. The driving was also not good on me. Logic dictated that traveling to Utah was going to make my leg worse, rather than better.

So I opted not to go to Utah.

I don't know if you are aware of what a tough decision this was. Utah State Fair was my last chance in the foreseeable future where I will make any money. The fair season is ending soon. I don't know what I'm going to do after that. Going to Utah, I would have made enough money to take care of our bills for September and some of October. Not going, I won't have any means to pay my bills. At all.

But I knew that my leg was not going to get better unless I stayed down with my leg elevated. So I decided to stay home.

And I have been going stir crazy! I love being with the kids. But all I do is lay in bed, reading. That is fun for about three days. When I want to watch a movie - which is not often, as we are trying to conserve gas for the generator - I have to rely on my own DVD library.

But the most frustrating is not being able to go out and provide for my family. I can assure you - this is anathema to the self worth of a man, not being able to bring home the proverbial bacon. Worse still, Temple has been out looking for work. Because my research has shown that blood clots can take MONTHS to dissolve. And there is a real chance that this could be permanent. In other words, who knows when I will be able to next go out and work?

And there is a part of Temple that resents this, I know. Years ago, there was a couple of months when she was the only one with a job, and the only one working. She has never let me play that down. There is a part of her that understands that I have a life-threatening condition and should not work. But there is another part of her that only sees the lazy bum, unshaven, in the same pajamas for a week, crashed out on the couch...

What woman wants THAT for a husband??


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Kalispell - Fun With DVT

The last week in Montana, we drove to Kalispell. What a beautiful drive it is - right up on the Canadian border, close to Glacier National Park. You have to drive around the enormous Flathead Lake to get there. Jagged peaks reflected in the glacial water - it is indeed what most people think of when they imagine Montana.

When we got there, we checked into a hotel. It was nice to sleep in a bed after a month of sleeping in a tent.

But my leg was really bothering me.

Back in Missoula, we had hiked to the "M". The hike had been strenuous for someone out of shape like me. When I got down, my legs were sore from the exertion for several days. After several days, the soreness went away in my right leg. It got progressively worse on my left leg.

The night we arrived in Kalispell, I went to Wal-Mart to get some quarters for laundry. As I stood in line at the customer service desk, my leg was causing me so much pain, I could hardly stand at all.

The next day, we set up our booth at the Northwest Montana Fair, which was a disorganized mess. To make matters worse, the parking was literally a mile away, and every day I limped a mile to the booth, and every night at midnight, I limped back to the car.

I was pleased to find the same Romani that had been our neighbors in Missoula to be our neighbors again in Kalispell. We made the an airbushed banner for their booth. They promised to pay us by feeding us everyday. This is the way they fed us:

"Here, I brought you some yogurts from the breakfast buffet at the hotel where we are staying. There is also some free popcorn in that building right there. Go, and get some!"

It's a good thing we weren't really depending on them.

One morning, Rose, one of the gypsy psychics brought me a gift - a stone egg with remnants of the tag still attached to it.

"I had a vision last night to give this to you. It will bring you good luck and good health. Keep it with you always. I want you to have this."

The following is the story of what happened the day I got the egg that was supposed to bring me good luck:

The pain got so bad that I couldn't stand it. Over the past few days, I had noticed vericose veins popping out on a leg that had never had them before. This same morning, I noticed swelling in my leg, and I could barely walk. Something was wrong. It was more than just soreness from the hike. Something was really wrong, and I knew it.

I talked to my brother in law. He thought I should tough it out. Soreness was good for you. I was sore, because I was out of shape. Soreness meant that I needed to hike more often.

I called my wives. They wanted me to go the ER. I limped to the EMT tent. They told me to go to the ER. I hesitated. Going to the ER, I would abandon my brother in law to the busy crowds by himself.

The fair got out at midnight. I limped back to the truck, exhausted. My wives called me and asked if I was going to the ER. I told her I would go in the morning. All I wanted was a good night's rest. Martha started to chew me out, saying that I needed to go to the ER. So I conceeded.

The doctor ordered a ultrasound. I had deep vein thrombosis (DVT) - a blood clot - in my left calf, and a smaller one in my thigh. They put me on blood thinners right away and told me to see my doctor as soon as I got back to Arizona.

The problem was - there were two more grueling days of the fair. I worked 13 hour days, and hoped that the 6 hours of sleep I was getting would be enough. At night, I would lay in bed, wondering if I would die in the night. After all, that is how my dad died - pulmonary embolism brought on by DVT.

When we finally packed up and left Kalispell, I was filled with a sense of relief. As I felt the warm sunshine on my face and imbibed the tranquil beauty of Flathead Lake one last time, I was happy to be going home. It had been six weeks since I had seen my family, and I felt that I had been through an ordeal. I felt like I could fight this from home.

We stopped in Salt Lake City to stay the night at my sister's house. I was alarmed to see that my foot and leg had swollen to twice its normal size. It looked like I had a Flintstone foot. But I had to keep going, I had to get home. The drive was uncomfortable. I could barely bend my leg as swollen as it was. My toes were tingling, and I kept a pillow propped under my leg.

The problem with getting treatment - I don't have insurance. I haven't had insurance for years. I called my doctor. I had a leftover bill from my hospital visit from last year. I called and tried to schedule an appointment. The receptionist pointed out I still had a bill. I told her that I was aware of this. I was willing to pay half of my bill the next day. She went and talked to the doctor and this was his answer:

"I talked to the doctor, and he is willing to treat you one last time. Then he wants you to get a new doctor. We are dropping you as a patient."

"Even if I pay my billl?" I demaned.

"The doctor feels that it has gone beyond that," she answered. "Do you want to shcedule an appointment?"

"Why?" I responded bitterly. "I need ongoing care. Why would I see him only once. I'll find a new doctor."

The truth is - I know why the doctor dropped me, and so does he. When I was in the hospital last year, we had a little conversation. Don't ask me why I did it. He asked me how many kids I have. I told him, and then I told him how many wives I have. The doctor is LDS, and I literally saw the hate in his eyes after that. He finished treating me, but even as he discharged me, he looked at me with hatred. This was not a case of my delinquent bill, as the receptionist lef me to believe. It was plain discrimination. I know it. And the doctor knows it.

I had my wife call the kids' pediatrician - an old Mormon, cowboy doctor. He agreed to see me.

After two days of traveling, I pulled into my house. It had been raining, as Arizona was in the middle of its monsoon season. So the ground was muddy. This didn't stop my kids from running out to see me. I limped inside, and let the girls put me in bed with pillows propped under my leg. My leg was huge.

I didn't know what was going to happen, but I was happy. If I was going to die, it would be at home and not in Montana.

Tomorrow, I will fill you in with the rest of my little tale...