Triple Bypass

The cardiologist said that Walter's heart attack last night was a very mild one.

He also said that Walter has severe cholesterol buildup and blockage in several arteries. They did the heart catheter this morning, prepared to put in a stent if need be. They didn't even bother trying. The blockages are just too severe.

The heart cath doc left me a message today, when I was out and about doing my own doctor stuff and errands. I was frustrated I missed the message, but then, being out taking care of business was good stress relief. Dr. Heart Cath said, --The blockage is in 3-4 different spots and in areas that look most suitable for bypass surgery...the best treatment for what he has. And he really does need to stay and have this done before he goes home, unfortunately.

Sounds like Walter was agitating for having his triple bypass done at home, not in Indiana.

He was pretty dead set on it with us, at least.

That, of course, would be foolish.

If the blockage is that bad, he's a candidate for another heart attack any old time, and the next one could well be fatal.

Say he's in an airplane high in the sky when it happens.

He's dead.

Say he's in a car, driving home through rural Georgia at 2 am when it happens.

He's dead.

Today he had a consult with the surgeon. When he mentioned he wanted the surgery done at home in Florida instead of there, the surgeon said something like, --We'll see, we'll talk about it tomorrow.

To me, that sounds like a good ol' poker-face doc response. Noncommittal.

But to Walter it sounded like, --Hey, you wanna go home? no biggie.

I called Walter and said it was out of the question. No one would take him home, not me or my mom or dad or Horacio or Danny or anybody. No way. What's he gonna do, walk home? He's having the bypass done up there and that's just how it's gonna be.

He said it was his decision and no one else's, and he was coming home for it, and that's how it's gonna be.

So far, I sicced my doc on his doc. The Heart Cath & More Cardiologist beats a surgeon any old day.

Then I called and told on him to kdad. He'll call Walter next. Then kmom.

kmom called me today while I was out on my errands and said she'd be there at the hospital for Walter when he has his surgery, so he won't be alone. When I told him that he seemed to lighten up quite a bit. Smart mom there, huh?

Horacio and his son Danny were here at the kranch when I finally got home. They used to work for us in our little shipping business and both were great workers. Danny was just a kid at the time, but he was worth most any 3 grown men put together.

Apparently they'd been reminiscing about back in the day. Times when Walter swooped up Danny or Horacio and went driving around the country with them, delivering furniture. And they remembered a time when I put together a nice rental car for them when they were stuck somewhere - can't remember where or why! - but it was a Crown Vic, I think. A nice comfy ride with enough room for road stuff inside.

So they'd been plotting away and decided to rent a vehicle and go pick up Walter, the two of them trading off driving, when the time came.

In 1996, when we bought this house and moved in, Horacio and his wife Juanita and Danny's big sister and Danny lived across the street. They welcomed us to the neighborhood. Juanita sent over a rosebud in a vase, a traditional housewarming gift, a bud getting ready to open up - your new life in your new home, about to bloom. That charmed the heck out of me.

Horacio had just gotten home from a two week stay in the hospital for double bypass surgery.

A couple of years ago, Juanita had heart trouble and had a stent put in.

So they have some personal familiarity with heart surgery themselves.

If I were Walter I'd want to come home too. He's concerned about getting follow-up care from heart docs who weren't in on the tests and surgery. But surely that happens all the time. We have great docs down here, they won't do him wrong.

OTOH, he's also worried about getting exposed to my MRSA germs after surgery. Perfectly reasonable.

And me, it half kills me to think about not being there for him when he goes in.

But even if I could get up there somehow...it's not safe. I had this vision flash before me: I hug him just before they prep him. And drop my germs on him. See, one thing MRSA especially loves? Surgery. Not just any old opening in the skin, surgery is. Nope. Puts that germ way IN the person, there. Inoculates them. Oh, happy happy MRSA, party time.

I was there when Walter had his back surgery, fusing his vertebrae. They went in from the front and pawed his guts aside to get to the back, and put in these little titanium baskets between the two vertebrae. The baskets hold bone splinters inside, making more bone grow, holding the vertebrae in place where the disk failed.

I wasn't there when he had his rotator cuff shoulder surgery. That's because I was in the hospital myself with the foot abscess in 2004. kmom came down here and took care of us both at the same time.

My man. My guy.

They can't do the triple bypass until at least Monday or Tuesday because of the blood thinners they gave him. Luckily, he's in a big private room with a flat screen TV/DVD.

That might hold him until he gets his laptop back.

Heart Attack

Not me. Walter.

Everyone is being almost nonchalant about it. I know that modern medicine is far advanced in some areas. Like this one. But a heart attack is still a heart attack and I don't like it a bit and I wish so very much it hadn't happened.

He's *fine.* He's in a new special cardiac hospital, or cardiac department, in Evansville, Indiana. They're doing a heart catheter this morning. Around 8:30 am we should have some new blood test results, too.

Not long before he came home for Thanksgiving, Walter told me he'd had recurring nausea for a couple of months. This was confusing. I had no idea what might cause that. Sometimes an ulcer or gastritis will. Sometimes postnasal drip from allergies. He didn't think it could be any of that, though.

As it turns out, it's an early forewarning of heart attack.

I feel like such a dummy sometimes.

Last night he called and said he felt bad. That he had pain everywhere. His arms, his fingernails, even his teeth. The only thing I could think of was either a heart attack or some sort of inflammatory process. He hurt in ways I do. Identically, I mean. Wherever there was connective tissue, even weird places like his gums.

He was sure it couldn't be his heart. He'd taken some naproxyn, and it helped for a short time. I said, Take some more. When he lay down he hurt far worse, his pillow and his bed felt like rocks. When he sat up he felt better. That can happen with an inflammatory process too, from the pressure on your sensitive aches. But he wasn't stiff. Stiffness after you lay down, now, that's classic for an RA experience. No stiffness? That threw me.

And the chest pain didn't sound right either. He said it was like something was punching him in the chest. There's only one thing I know of that gets described that way.

I called my dad. Any ideas? Nope. Dad thought he should consider the ER.

I called Walter back. No no no, no hospitals. He was in the middle of nowhere and didn't think there could be a hospital worth going to, where he was.

We talked. And something he said hit me, something I'd missed the first time around: that he only felt this from the chest up. NOT head to toe.

I said, Waallllter! Why do you think this can't be a heart attack?

Oh! because BOTH my arms hurt, and my teeth, and and and...

I told him, Look. Do me a favor. Go google up *heart attack* symptoms, okay? The symptoms can really vary person to person. Just go LOOK for yourself. I'm not a doctor and neither are you. Call me back.

He did. And he'd found many of his symptoms in there, even ones he thought meant it wasn't a heart attack: the nausea, even the teeth and fingernails hurting.

I said, Excuse me for a minute, I'll call you right back.

And hung up and called my dad, and said, I think he's having a heart attack. He's refusing to go to the hospital. Would you please call him and talk to him?

(Daaaaddd! Walter's being BAD and won't go to the doctor! NOT!! FAIR!! Make him GO!)

It worked. It worked. Thank you God, it worked.

Walter called me after Dad talked to him. He did not sound happy. He said, --So. You enlisted your dad, huh?

I said, --Sure. Of COURSE.

I have great respect for people's right to make their own decisions. For me to do something like that in the first place - call my dad and ask him to twist Walter's arm - and then to say, *Of course* about it - is NOT normal behavior for me.

Walter was quiet. Then he said, --I told him yes.

--Did you call 911?

--Yes.

(breathing again breathing when was the last time I could breathe)

Good.

And I thanked him. --Walter: Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

He made some noise about we have to stop if I'm going to get all emotional so of course I canned it after that.

The EKG was normal. The blood test, though, was positive for a heart attack.

They moved him from the first ER to the cardiac unit at that other hospital. Where I had a nice long conversation with his nurse, and told her he might be colonized with my MRSA so please be careful and don't catch it...and now Walter will be sure to have a private room for the duration of his stay.

heh!

They say he'll probably only be there for one more night. If he needs a stent they'll put one in during the heart cath this morning. He seems to think that he'll be driving again two days from now.

I have my doubts. The nurse said the doc may want him to rest a week or so. That they'll take his job into consideration. Whereupon I said, --Over the road long haul big rig trucker.

NOT that Walter would try to fudge anything like that. He truly wouldn't. Just...double checking.

She said, --Yes, that's what Walter said. So the doctor will take that into account.

Good.

Walter, I expect you may get pretty pissed at me for posting this. Sorry, but -- tough shit.

People. Please send him all the strength you can, okay?

It's All Over but the Mopping Up

Remember back in the day, when you'd get a 45 rpm *short version* of a song, as opposed to the *long version* available on the LP record?

JUST in case you hadn't seen enough of this...Yes indeed, that there is my Thanksgiving turkey. A big hulking 20 pounder, no less.

If you see any funny looking bumps, that's a clove of garlic under its skin.

There was a time I said, --Can't have *too much garlic.* It's a contradiction in terms.-- Then one day I finally used too much in something. Can't remember what it was. Anyway, I don't say that any more.

Still eat it by the fistful, though.

Then there's that very last pan that hangs around waiting to get scrubbed clean. This one wasn't from turkey but from beef stew.

I'm ever so fond of Alternative Uses of Tools. Now that I don't use *no-stick* pans any more, I can use paint scrapers again. Works great. Total time to clean this pan, start to finish after soaking? Less than 2 minutes.

And just WHY, you may ask, am I bothering all y'all with TURKEY stuff when you've moved on to back-to-work drudgery, or the next holiday and all its attendant duties and fun?

Because these Thanksgiving pix weren't brought to you by me. They were brought to me by you.

I couldn't have done this without all of you who so generously gave of your wallets and your hearts to the *k Scooter Project.*

See, there's no other way I could have cooked Thanksgiving dinner without being able to walk.

Walter watched me bopping happily around the kitchen cooking, and he fondly - and correctly - observed, --You're gonna be sick for a week, you know.-- He was grinning his special Walter grin at me.

--Yup!-- I replied, grinning back.

He was right, of course. All that scooter shopping and then cooking wore me to a nub. And I couldn't be more thrilled.

The one and only drawback is, writing the Longer Playing version of my *Thank You* post is slow going just now. I keep sleeping and sleeping instead.

Soon enough I'll slowly work my way out of my cocoon like my little io moths, and post the long version. When it's ripe.

Until then I didn't want to let one more minute go by without thanking each and every one of you who gave, whether it was funds, or your moral support in blog posts and comments and emails and a phone call, or just your unspoken good wishes. All those things - not just my beautiful new scooter, but the moral support too - have given me a boost of strength and happiness far deeper than you may ever know.

I'm trying really hard not to get all mushy on ya again. Really hard.

So for now, just...thank you.

Love,

k

They Hatched!

Or whatever you call it when moths emerge from their little pupae.

This is what I saw when I checked my container of pupae before I went back to sleep. Two moths, quietly hanging from the twigs sticking out of the cocoon nursery.

Naturally, it rather woke me up.

So I've been taking pix with my Nikon. And below are what I got with the digital, too. Sorry this first one's so indistinct. I was a little leery of disturbing them. But, in the end, they permitted me to actually handle them.

There are two moths in this pic - the left is a male, smaller and lighter; the right is a female. I was hoping the females would be the special reddish brown Florida color variety - and it looks to me like they are.

There was a third male, hanging on the inside of the container.

I had fun and played with them for a while, and now all three are outside. Free.

Female Io Moth

Male Io Moths

Nancy's Home!

All this good news. And the best news of all? Nancy is HOME from the hospital! Yes! She escaped and is Free At Last!

They beat her half to death, starved her of proper diabetic food, and drank her blood dry. But I'll let her fill you in on all the gory details. It's a great story.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!

Got It!

YAY!!! Here it is!

I ended up getting a Pride *Go Go Ultra.* It's a step up from the *Go Go* I was looking at over at Chair Care. I went to another store I learned about from DC: he'd left a comment about a link showing the Go Go at a good price on the net, by *The Easy Mobility Company.* So I clicked. And guess what else that site said? *New Store in S. Florida!* Now THAT was very interesting. The store is called *Scooters and Lifts,* at 8973 Taft Street, Pembroke Pines, FL; phone 1-877-432-3279, or 954-432-7970.

I called. They were open until 5. Walter came home with the hitch and platform installed, and still had enough energy to drive us out to Pembroke. We got there around 4:30.

And the person manning the shop - one of the proprietors, it seems - was very nice, very informative, and quite lacking a little bit of a hard-sell flavor that Rich at Chair Care had.

I really don't like doing business with hard-sell types. They're untrustworthy and rude and make me feel icky instead of warm fuzzies, and usually the tiniest whiff of hard-sell tactics will send me packing. Most people probably wouldn't consider Rich hard-sell. He hides it carefully. But there was enough of that edge to put me on guard. Certainly we didn't want to walk out his door yesterday with a scooter in hand; we'd decided that before we walked in.

I was glad, too. There were some significant errors in what Rich told us. Example: He never mentioned that the Go Go was discontinued by the factory. However, Walter and I took a guess at that, because on our way out the door, Rich said, --Would you like me to hold this for you? It's the last one we have left, not sure I can get another one in.-- That meant what we suspected it did. Folks, that matters. It's a material difference if it's a discontinued item. I do NOT want parts issues to arise.

The guy at *Scooters and Lifts*? That's one of the very first things he told us. And he had both models to try to sell, too. He didn't make any kind of issue out of it; just explained it was why the Go Go cost less than the Ultra, because it was being discontinued.

The newer version, *Go Go Ultra,* has a few nice upgrades. First, it comes apart and reassembles even more easily. Second, the heaviest part when it's disassembled is 28 pounds, not 32. In real life, that matters. Third, we could get an upgraded battery pack for an additional $55. Most battery packs in our scooter class hold a charge for *up to* 10 miles. The upgraded pack goes 13-15 miles instead. It may not sound like much, but believe me, that's an important difference. *Range* is a significant spec when you get to actually using the thing. You don't want to run out of juice in the middle of shopping.

Rich at Chair Care didn't tell us about the battery upgrade option, which only fits on the Ultra. He also told us the heaviest part on the Go Go, disassembled, was 24 pounds. It isn't. It's 32. BIG difference. Really big mistake.

He was also mistaken about the Class 1 hitch weight: Uhaul says it pulls 2000 pounds - not 200. See, Rich was pushing us to get a lift, which is much more expensive: $500, and I think that was before installation. We told him a lift was absolutely out of the question financially. He kept talking *lift.* We said *no lift* several more times. Then he threw in a little scare tactic about how the scooter might fall off a cargo carrier on the highway.

Maybe he forgot he was talking to people who'd owned a furniture shipping business. We're not idiots. We know how to tie that sucker on pretty damn good. We tied furniture in the oddest ways sometimes: on top of a highrise elevator, on all sorts of handtrucks, loaded inside the truck in difficult ways; sometimes, yes, on the OUTSIDE of the truck. And driven like that for hundreds to thousands of miles. We never, ever, ever, lost an item. Ever.

After my phone calls the last few weeks, Rich knew all about the Scooter War with BCBS HO M&M; that we're totally broke; that being scooterless is genuinely dangerous for my foot; that my wonderful blog friends got together to get me this scooter; and that we were going to be pretty vocal on the net about this for a while, even after the scooter was purchased, because it's a nasty and wrong health insurance situation that hurts a lot of other people besides just me. He knew I'll try to get a second, heavy-duty scooter for yardwork next year as well, using my new insurance company and a $500 copay. Those scooters cost much more money. A bigger sale down the road, if Rich was interested enough in us as customers.

My point? He had any number of good reasons to work with us on the price. With Rich, I didn't want to ask for a discount; I wanted to see if he would make that offer. He did not.

Prices: Rich at Chair Care was selling the Go Go for $850, and the Ultra for $950.

Scooters & Lifts was selling the Go Go for $749, and the Ultra for $799.

Yup. The better model for $150 less. For $50 less than the discontinued model at Chair Care! Plus...the nice people at Scooters & Lifts throw in a free drink holder too. Another $20 right there. $20 I wouldn't have spent, even though I really, really, really wanted one. This way I got my cupholder, guilt-free, oh happy!

Chair Care pretty much sold only Pride models. Scooters & Lifts had a wide variety of brands, and a much bigger selection overall. We looked around, and I test drove a Phantom, same class, $50 less, some nice features like a headlight. But the Phantom just didn't have the sturdy quality and great pickup of the Pride model. Pride is the biggest, the #1 selling scooter company, and I can see why. Those are good scooters at good prices. Cool.

Really, both stores had good prices. These things generally retail for over $1000. Even the model we saw at Sam's Club for $784 wasn't nearly as good. So maybe we're splitting hairs a bit. But the comfort level we had at Scooters & Lifts was much greater, too. Just the errors Rich made, alone...yuck.

So we bought it.

Here's the total cost: Pride Go Go Ultra Scooter $799, 17 amp battery pack $55, sales tax $51.24, grand total $905.24. If you look on the internet, it would be hard to beat that price unless you waited a couple weeks for free shipping. And I haven't seen much on offer about the battery pack upgrade. That's a BIG peace of mind thing, there.

(Forgive me this, GrannyJ...)

And what did that nice man do when I asked if he had a blue one, instead of red?

The night before Thanksgiving - and it was way past closing time already - he said the only blue one was at a storage place, not on the premises. We did up the papers at the store, and he drove out to get the blue scooter, with us following him in our car. He found it, the guys loaded it on the cargo carrier and tied it down, and we came home. Beaming all the way.

Isn't that great?

Now THAT is a store I'll do business with any day of the week, and send all my friends to, and talk up on my site, and tell all the neighbors about.

oh BOY!

You know what this means?

I can cook Thanksgiving dinner.

Walter just LOVES turkey!

Those Important Details

Here's the dashboard. On the lower right is the speed knob. That's fun. It's on *medium slow* in the pic. Can you see the little figures and an arrow above it? The left figure is a tortoise, for *slow.* The right figure is a rabbit, a hare, for *fast.* Cute, huh?

This class of scooter generally goes 4 to 4.5 miles per hour. The store scooters go around 2 MPH I think. (argghhh!)

Yes. That scooter's blue. GrannyJ was campaigning for R.E.D. She loves red. Luckily, she said she wouldn't shoot me if I got blue. As a compromise she suggested purple. But they don't seem to come in purple.

On the back of the seat hangs a little zippered bag. I love that. I need that. It looks like just the right size for...

The charger. That sucker's a BIG one. Probably for that supercharged 17 amp battery pack!

But I'm too tired to see if it fits, for tonight. Tomorrow I can play with it.

And we mustn't forget that all-important Cupholder!

kmom, did you see this?

(cupholders being a major decision criterion in purchasing a car.)

For Marvin

No crab legs in there. No onions anymore either. But just so you know? This is how the 50-pound bag of onions I got a couple weeks ago fits on that platform.