up2in2

In one of my recent posts we discussed the issue of bovine tissue heart valves being used to replace defective and damaged valves in human hearts. Here is a picture of a bovine tissue valve after it has been prepared for insertion into a human heart. In the same post I showed a picture of the UCD Men's Rowing Team Varsity Eight... well the guy in the 'five-seat' (counting from the bow of the boat - that's the front for all of you unfamiliar with rowing backwards to get ahead), recently fell ill with an infection in the lining of his heart and recieved a bovine tissue valve replacement for his aortic valve (that's the valve between the heart itself and the main artery leaving the heart, the aorta) and a repair to the mitral valve between the left atrium and left ventrical.

Here's some diagrams to help all y'all out...
















OK... so now all y'all are on ur way (to sleep?) to being doctors; that's good. Meanwhile, back in Fresno, our hero (me) was in pretty bad shape. On Sunday the 3rd of September I started to have ventricular fibrillation. I was in heart failure and on the verge of cardiac arrest. On Monday I was given an angiogram to figure out what was up... on Tuesday I had open heart surgery to replace my aortic valve and repair the mitral valve.


Then things got interesting. I didn't wake up Tuesday after the surgery. In fact my health continued to decline. It turns out that not only did I have bacterial endocarditis (bacterial infection of the inside lining of the heart), I also was in septic shock and cardiogenic shock... there are good explanations of all these terms at http://medlineplus.gov , if you're interested.

Then things REALLY got interesting. I developed pnuemonia, my feet filled up with blood clots, and I had numerous cariac arrests (heart stopped). I was a mess... according to my heart surgeon, Dr. Peter Birnbaum, "you were tettering on the edge of death; you were on the verge of kidney failure and there was nothing more we could do. I expected you to die."

Suprise! Then things got better. After all but leaving me for dead on Friday, I started to show improvement on Saturday; my kidneys did not fail and I started to regain conciousness. By Sunday afternoon I was coherent; that evening I was watching TV... on the anniversary of 9/11 I was so out of my mind that I thought there was a sniper in the tree across the street (turns out that paranoia and other strange behaviors are not uncommon for people who have been unconcious for any length of time); on Tuesday the 12th I ate my first meal in over a week and was moved out of the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit; on Tuesday the 19th I was transferred to a physical rehabilitation hospital where I spent sixteen days while recieving IV antibiotics and attending 3 hours of physical therapy each day. During this period I went from being unable to walk due to my gangrenous feet (remember those blood clots I mentioned?) to performing light weight lifting exercises and spending time on the stationary bicycle. I continued to eat as much food as I could manage as my weight was down to 185#. On Thursday, October 5th I left the rehab hospital and went back to my Aunt Cinda's house.

I spent the next week finishing up IV antibiotic therapy and eating as much food as I could. My weight was still below 190#, and I could barely climb a flight of stairs without getting dizzy. The antibiotics made me feel like shit and the everyfourhours schedule kept me from getting more than three hours of sleep at a time. I was constantly exhausted and extremely week. I did some reading, but mostly I slept and watched TV.


On Friday, October 13th I was admitted to the hospital for partial foot amputations. Put down your sandwich and have a look at the dorsal view (that'd be the view from the top - like a shark's DORSAL fin)!





Not so bad, you say. It's just your toes...




Now check out the plantar surfaces (that'd be the bottoms).



Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew... yep, it's true. Those are my size sixteens. My dogs and all my piggies after holding their breath for a few days. No more '15 feet' license plate frames for me... no saying I have to row in the six seat because the rest of the shoes in the boat are too small for me... no more going toe to toe... no more tip-toeing around uncomfortable situations... no more troublesome toenails... no more toe jam (or jambed toes)... no more fancy toe-nail polish. It's over folks; my toes have been thrown in the trash.

But I'm alive, and I haven't been in a wheelchair for ten days now... the future so bright, I've gotta wear shades.

U(N)5M

p.s. walk walk walk... ridin the stumpy... liftin weights... hittin the road... could be worse; could be rainin!

d.

You may recognize this illustration as that of a cow. Bossie (not her real name) provided this image for free in the hopes that people would pay good money for an actual picture, video, or one-on-one interview... in fact, she does private parties by special arrangement. Of course, I'm a God Fearing Member of the Grand Old Party and I categorically oppose Bossie or any other living thing from prostituting itself to make ends meet. I think that we should all send whatever we can afford to:

Bossie Cow Cow
c/o Save Bossie From a Life of Shame
General Delivery
Western Nevada County, CA 95949


This is a picture of a human heart... it has come to my attention that contemporary human technology has made it feasible to replace defective valves in the human heart with bovine tissue valves. I'm pretty sure that Bossie and the rest of her species are unable to survive the necessary trauma involved in such a procedure. Suffice it to say that it would behoove Bossie and other domestic bovines to contact PETA and moo their case against bovine heart valve harvesting.

I think that there is an effective campaign just waiting to be waged here. It's a 'one-two' punch "No Heart Valves, No Hamburgers" platform. Get involved folks... one billion Indians can't be wrong!

Moving on...

When I was a member of the UC Davis Men's Rowing Team we initiated an annual fundraiser for the program called Bovine Bingo. To play Bovine Bingo one would buy one or more of 10,000 "bingo" cards where each card represented a 1' by 1' square in a 100' x 100' area of the UCD Quad. Once all the bingo cards had been sold, Bossie Cow Cow (not a psuedonym in this case) would 'pick' a square by a process known as Random Bovine Defecation (RBD). RBD was developed by two UCD Undergraduates, Heather Tiernan and Duncan Moyer.

Except for it's licensed use by the Men's Crew once each fall, this proprietary algorithm has been kept secret by powerful communist elements of the administration for fear that the silent (and moral) majority of Americans would apply it to gerrymandering effort s in key battleground states. This is just the tip of the iceberg people! One minute those lefties are merely smarter and more mature than us... the next thing you know, Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House - taking crystal and having gay sex with underage male members of the Congressional staff. God Bless America: land of the fruits, home of the nuts.

But I digress... Bovine Bingo was a huge 'shot-in-the-arm' for the Men's Crew - just look at these guys!


To be continued...

U5M

... begins with a single step (or perhaps a single revolution of the wheels on my wheelchair).

It seems that I've managed to almost get myself killed again (stay tuned for further postings for details on my unabashed brushes with death over the years). I've spent five and one-half of the last nine weeks in a hospital; the previous six weeks I spent lying down because of a back injury; and for the last quarter of 2004, most of 2005, and the first half of 2006, I was avidly practicing the art of self-destruction.

The last four months of my life have been filled with physical pain and emotional uncertainty. Sometime in September I reached a life-long nadir... some will to live smoldered deep inside in me: what to call it I don't know, but IT has surely carried me through these times.

It is often said, "What does not kill, will make one stronger." I would like to amend this to "What does not kill provides an opportunity to learn and become stronger." To accept the popular version is to reduce life to simple if-then proposition that depends little on how we respond to what we experience. I counter this with the postulate that life is, in fact, choice; that is, we are not defined merely by our past experience... but the degree to which we exercise our will and ability to choose in this moment determines who we are.

So, at this low-point in my life, I will be more interested in blogging my responses in the moment than to looking back as if the past determines the now or the future. Of course the past is important for reflection and context... my hope is to know what's back there yet keep looking ahead.

If life were a motorcycle ride, I'd give respect to cops and traffic in the mirrors, and I would drive the road ahead... careful not to give too much energy to potholes and insignificant obstacles. Managing bumps and such is surely something worthwhile: just ask my friend Johnnie Sprocket http://www.beatsgriffracing.blogspot.com/ He hit a bump and somebody screamed... you should have heard just what I seen.



Here's a picture of my loyal companion, Barney. He's the yellow one. He's also a love-bug.

U5M.