I have had a couple of months to sit back and take a long look at the world around me. I was mostly disappointed with what I saw, but there were exceptions.
Daytime Television Is Worse Than You Think. Nothing has depressed me more than the fact that when I was bedridden, all the entertainment I had was daytime television. It mainly consists of programs like Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, local interest shows and lots of infomercials. Most of the commercials shown during these programs are targeted to the typical viewers this time of day, which apparently consist of high school drop outs, car accident victims, and men with small penises. Whats worse, usually they show the same three or four commercials over and over again during a one hour show, so there is no escape from the madness.
People In Wheelchairs Should Get More Respect. Right now, with one amputated limb and one broken limb, I am wheelchair-bound. This means such everyday tasks like going to the bathroom are now are virtually impossible for me to do by myself. When I go outside and try to propel my wheelchair down the sidewalk, I notice every little crack and uneven surface, and get tired out easily. I’ve always felt sorry for peole forced to use a wheelchair; now I have a genuine respect for what they have gone through and for what they have to deal with on a daily basis.
The Quality Of Your Hospital Care Is Based Upon Your Nurses. Doctors get all of the credit for making people well, but nurses should get most of the credit. For the most part. the nurses who have cared for me have been excellent. They’ve shown a genuine interest in my situation, treated me with kindness and respect, and have been there when I needed them. Chances are, if your nurses treat you badly, you’ll do everything you can to avoid that hospital in the future, and you should.
The TV Show How it’s Made Is Facinating. Sown on the Discovery Channel, this show takes you behind the scenes at factories to show you how all sorts of things are manufactured. They’ve detailed everything from toothpicks to buttons to plate glass to blue jeans. What usually interests me are the custom machines used to fashoin these items. Also, there is a lot of work which is done by hand on a lot of this stuff, and sometime it surprises me that a oarticular process is not automated. It isn;t everyone’s cup of tea, but I was hooked the first time I saw it.
Family Is The Most Important Thing In The World. Without a doubt, I owe my recovery to my family who have not forgotten me while I’ve been in the hospital. Their visits have let me stay in contact with the outside world, and I can’t tell you how important that is to me. Just as with people in wheelchairs, I have a new found appreciation of family and how important it is to my well-being.
Sorry I have not updated lately, but I have been having some computer problems, and my computer genius (Nick) is not here. Last time I posted, I told you that Nick had broken his knee on his right leg (the good leg). He was hospitalized for that for about a week, and then they had to discharge him. They considered his case to no longer be “medically necessary” and the insurance company wanted him out of the hospital (they are evil, evil, evil). At this point in the hospital they were only taking care of his basic needs that I could not do at home. Remember, he has an amputated left leg and a broken right one. We met with the hospital social worker to see what our options were. He recommended that the place Nick in a Skilled Nursing Facility a.k.a a nursing home. So that is where Nick in now, in a nursing home. It is a strange situation for Nick because he is only 45 and all of the other residents are 80 years +. I am not sure how long he will be there, but the idea is to keep him there until his broken knee heals. That could mean a 4-6 week stay. If he leaves early, its only because the insurance company has decided through their own great wisdom that he doesn’t need to be there anymore.
Well, I have finally gotten my hands on a computer with Internet access here in the hospital. I’ve been offline for almost two months and this feels a little weird.
As Rene has told you, due to massive infection my left foot was amputated on October 29th. Undoubtedly, this has been a real life-changing event and will continue to challenge me, my wife, and the rest of my family and friends for the foreseeable future. Speaking for myself, I have experienced the full range of emotional turmoil and am currently trying to deal with what is going on.
While all of these things have been happening, I have been very fortunate to have the love, support, and prayers of my family and close friends, as well as many of you. Your support has, at times, been all I’ve had to sustain myself as I have struggled to come to grips with my situation. As you might imagine, your support is very important to me and my family, and there is no tangible way to tell you how much it is appreciated. There is also no possible way to thank you adequately for giving it. All I can say is that it is not taken for granted by any of us, and I hope that I can continue to be worthy of your support in the future.
Now that I have online access, I’ll try to be more of an online presence, but it will be a slow process.
Nick completed rehab last week and came home on the 12th. As he was entering our front door he fell while using his walker and broke a bone in his right knee. He has been back in the hospital since last Thursday. This is very frustrating because now he can’t use either leg. His amputated leg is healing very well and was not injured during the fall, thank God. This recent development is going to delay his planned date to return to work, and I am very worried that he has just about used up all of his sick and vacation time, I am also concerned that once he is no longer receiving a paycheck, we may not receive medical benefits. I just don’t now what to do. I am at the end of my rope, and can use as many prayers as possible right now. Not just for me, but for Nick as well.
Nick has been at the rehab hospital for almost a week now. He is making great progress, but he is exhausted. They are working him very hard both in physical therapy and occupational therapy. he had four hours of therapy a day 2 PT and 2 OT. Nick says that this is the most difficult and exhausting thing that he has ever been through. Since the initial ankle fracture on 9/29, he has lost 40 pounds. So he is feeling very week. They good news is that he had 40 pounds to lose, so he actually looks great at his current “skinny” weight. However, he did not lose all of this weight in a healthy manner so he does not feel that great. They are thinking of releasing Nick from rehab next Thursday (11/13). He will be using a walker while in the house, and a wheelchair when he goes out, He plans to go back to work on Monday 11/24. Rehab has stressed that he not spend to much time at home before going back to work. They really stress that he needs to remain as active as possible, otherwise the ground he gained at rehab could be lost.
Please keep thinking of him, and keep the prayers coming.
Tomorrow (Saturday), Nick will be transferred via an ambulance to a rehabilitaion facility. At the rehab center, Nick will begin to learn how to live life as an amputee. This is important because won’t be getting his prothesis until the end of the year. For now, he will be using a wheelchair and a walker. Nick seems happy to be moving on to rehab which is much more like regular daily living when compared to being in the hospital. He will be wearing his own clothes in rehab instead of the peek-a-boo hospital gowns that we all despise so much.
Nick’s mood is incredibly good considering everything that he has been through. I think that all of your prayers have had a hand in that.
Nick had his surgery. He now has a below the knee amputation on the left side. After the surgery, the doctor came out and told me that everything went fine and that Nick had definitely made the right decision to amputate. His left foot and ankle were no longer viable. When I left Nick tonight at the hospital, he was very heavily medicated with morphine and vicodin. I will be back in the morning to see him and will be there all day. My mother will also be going with me.
I would like to think that Nick has gotten through the roughest part of this ordeal. But he still needs to learn how to live life as an amputee. After he has healed for a while in the hospital, he will most likely be sent to a rehab facility to learn how to get about with a walker and a wheelchair until he gets a prosthetic leg. If all goes well, he should get his prosthesis around Christmas time.
Please keep the prayers coming, and please think of him often. Both would be greatly appreciated.
Nick has made the very difficult decision to go ahead with the amputation. On Monday, October 27, Nick will have a below the knee amputation on the left side. He has made peace with his decision because he knows that medically, and for the quality of his life, it is the right decision to make for his situation.
I have some unfortunate news on Nick’s condition. We took Nick to the Dr. on Monday to have the surgical dressing removed from his ankle. We found that the entire ankle and foot was grossly infected. They admitted Nick to the hospital that night and the next day, (yesterday) they took Nick into surgery. When they opened up the ankle, they discovered that the tissue and bone had actually died and had to be removed. Nick still has his foot, but he is facing a almost certain amputation. There are other options to try to keep the foot, but it would be a very hard and long procedure lasting up to two years or more. The amputation would be up to his mid-shin. Nick is doing the best he can in finding a way to deal and cope with this. The decision is his, but I think he knows what needs to be done.
Please pray for him and add him to your church prayer list if possible.
Nick came home from the hospital late Friday evening. On Saturday, he began to vomit again, but instead of returning him to the hospital, we decided to wait it out and see of it would stop on its own. Eventually it did. This morning Nick fainted twice because of all the fluid he lost due to all the vomiting. So we proceeded to push fluids on him which helped to bring him around. This afternoon we discovered that his blood sugar level was very high, so we have been giving him regular injections of insulin, and the level is just starting to come down. It is still very high though at 580, but it was much higher than that.
Nick is feeling very tired and becomes exhausted with very little effort. Please keep thinking of him, and all prayers are welcome
On Sunday, I had to return Nick to the hospital. He had only been home for a few hours from his previous hospital stay when he became very ill and I had to take him back. Right how Nick is unable to swallow anything without immediately vomiting. He also has pain in his upper abdomen whenever he coughs or vomits. Right now things don’t look very promising, so we need all the prayers we can get.
Nick was released from the hospital on Sunday, October 6th. His ankle surgery went fine and we thought that all would go well. As it turns out I had to return Nick to the emergency room within a few hours of bringing him home. Right after we got home, his blood sugar was up to 600 and he began to vomit profusely. SO, back to the hospital he went.
Yesterday when they took Nick to dialysis, they discovered that his fistula (through which he receives dialysis) was completely blocked. So they sent him to surgery to have a temporary port put in his neck so he could receive dialysis.
Today, we are waiting for the hospital to find a vascular surgeon to take Nick back into surgery to have his fistula unblocked (the blockage is due to a blood clot).
So, that is where we are right now. I will update this page later when I have more information.
On September 30th, Nick fell on a piece of ice in our kitchen and fell hard. We were told in the emergency room that Nick had broken his tibia and fibula right as they join the ankle. Yesterday he had surgery on the ankle to correct the damage; they found that both broken bones had several other fractures as well. So, his ankle after surgery is now being held together with plates, screws and surgical pins. He will be using a walker for approximately the next eight weeks, they are going to place a removable “moon boot” on the ankle so he can check his foot daily for skin irritations or ulcers (this is common among diabetics).
So, please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. He has had a rough time lately with his health, and he really didn’t need for this to happen.
Rene
The current banking crisis was caused by the incredible number of home owners who defaulted on their mortgages in the past couple of years. Why did so many people fail to pay their mortgage? That’s easy — they couldn’t afford to make the payments. Why not? Because, for the most part, they couldn’t afford the mortgage they received from the bank.
If they couldn’t afford the mortgage to begin with, why did the bank give it to them? Because, under a Jimmy Carter administration law called the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), to which huge changes were made by the Clinton Administration and passed by the Democrats in Congress, all financial lending institutions were required to make loans to minority applicants without regard to their ability to make the payments required by the loan. In fact, if the lending institutions didn’t make these loans, they faced huge financial penalties from the government.
Democrats had been looking at mortgage statistics and found that minority applicants did not receive mortgages at the same rate that non-minority applicants did. Being Democrats, they cried, “racism!” and quickly drafted the CRA. It never occurred to the Democrats that the reason that these minority applicants were turned down was because their credit was bad; they simply decided that it had to be racism because everyone knows that the only reason banks don’t loan money to minorities is because they are keeping them down. So, the CRA instituted quotas for the lenders to meet, and the rest is history.
Republicans saw this coming, and tried to get a new regulatory agency created to oversee the loan process and stop these bad financial practices, but the Democrats claimed that there were no problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and prevented anything from changing.
Watch this video for a real good expanation of what happened:
The head of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac during all of this was a man named Frank Raines. This is the man Senator Obama named as his Economic Adviser for his Presidential Campaign. What kind of economic advice do you think he would give to Obama if he is elected? Do you think it would be any different than what he did at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac? What does this tell you about Obama’s ability to make sound judgments when it comes to the nation’s economy? It tells me this:
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