My Dad’s obit is live on the Syracuse Post-Standard this morning.
We did a round-trip into Ohio over the weekend for a funeral, one of Jen’s extended family. His name was Floyd and he was a funny man, extremely nice to me when I met him, and he and his wife always sent us Christmas cards. While we were there we saw Jen’s sister Annie and her son Scott, as well as her father and the larger Ohio contingent of her mother’s family. It was a long trip out and a long trip back, my second in a month, and I don’t think I need to go to Ohio again for a while.
While that was happening, our refrigerator decided it was going to go wonky (probably in protest of the small upright freezer Jen bought and installed in the basement). Jen had emptied and defrosted it after moving a pile of stuff to the new freezer, but when we plugged it back in the temperature in the fridge section wasn’t staying cold enough. We packed up a bunch of food and brought it to our brother and sister’s spare garage fridge the night before we left; hopefully we haven’t lost three dozen eggs and two gallons of milk. On our return from Ohio the fridge was cooled properly, if not slowly, so we did some recon on the tail end of the Labor Day sales to see what’s out there.
Most of the new model fridges have things like TV screens and cooling drawers and lights that come on when you knock on the window (yes, they have windows). Most of them are bottom-freezer designs, which I like. They are larger, taller and deeper than ours because they were made for modern kitchens. Ours is a smaller traditional top-freezer design. It’s hiding out in the old hall closet under the stairs, tucked into a hole hacked in the wall. Because of the angle of the stairwell above, I’ve only got a certain amount of width and height I can work with, and the closet is only so deep. Most modern units are 70″ high by 36″ wide, and I think I can make a hole big enough to squeeze one in there. I would have liked to have the weekend to cut and trim the walls to test my theory before making a $1500 purchase, but didn’t have enough time, so we will miss out on Labor Day sales. I’m betting our fridge will probably last another couple of months, especially now that the heat and humidity has left, and we’ll look at a new one in late winter when money is more plentiful.
Meanwhile there’s a hurricane blowing in this week, and we have no idea what it will do to this area. I bought a submersible pool pump from Amazon for delivery tomorrow, and I’ll go out and shore up the defenses after work tomorrow night. I would also have liked to clean the gutters this weekend, but I guess I’ll deal with what I get when it gets here.
Finn had a friend over for a playdate on Saturday so Jen and I took the opportunity to get things done around the house.
We hauled the cucumber tubs out of the greenhouse and dumped them at the edge of the yard. They were infested with whiteflies, which had disappeared since my first mention and then returned in force. I then mixed up some of the insecticidal soap and sprayed the shit out of all the remaining tomato plants. After two treatments there were hundreds of dead whiteflies laying on the edges of the tubs, so hopefully with a few more applications I can save the rest of the plants. The box fan I’d put in there died sometime back in late July so there’s been no real air movement in there, which is also bad.
We pulled a Dagma and an other Oaxaca from the big plants and a handful of black, yellow and cherry tomatoes from the others, and a lot of them found their way into our salad Saturday night. I also swapped out the green rain barrel on the platform behind the greenhouse, which has a leak somewhere, for one of the soda barrels and pumped the water from Friday’s rainstorm into it. With that and one more good rainstorm we should be able to make it through the fall without going to the hose (with the exception of our vacation, everything I’ve used in the greenhouse has been rainwater, and I’m pretty proud of that).
Sunday we did some errands and in the afternoon I went over to Christi & Glenn’s house to help wake up their Acura, which has been slumbering in their garage since it french-kissed a Prius in 2016. They parked it in the garage because it’s in need of serious bodywork before it can be roadworthy again. Miraculously, even though the top of the radiator has been pushed back 4″ and the bumper mounts are pushed downwards 6″, it hasn’t leaked any critical fluids. I brought over a set of ramps, a siphon kit, a set of tools, and jumper cables in the Scout. First I checked all the fluids to see how it looked and found everything topped off. I pulled the battery and cleaned the cables and posts. Then we looked at siphoning the gas but were thwarted by a metal screen at the base of the fuel tank, so we jacked it up, pulled the tire off, and used a handy drain plug to empty the tank. Once the varnish was out we put about 2 gallons of good gas in it, stuck the tire back on, and hooked the battery back up. With the cables from the Scout on it, it only took two tries (I had to adjust the cable for the best connection) to fire the car right up.
We let it idle for a while, then Glenn turned it around in the driveway so that the exhaust was facing outward and pulled it back inside before the temp gauge crept up (the inlet hose to the radiator is kinked shut at a 90˚ angle from the impact). He’s thrilled and I’m happy for them to have it running again. I left him with instructions for a trickle charger and some tarps to keep the varmints off.
Labor Day was quiet for us. I woke Finn up at 7AM to go do some soccer drills on the field across the street, and we stayed out for about 40 minutes before the gnats and Finley’s bladder brought us back inside. Mama had started a pumpkin pancake assembly line so we helped her finish that and chowed on pancakes and hash browns for a hearty breakfast.
After that, we geared up for a hike in Patapsco and happened across another Scout parked at the trailhead: a yellow Scout I’ve seen around Baltimore for years. We met the owner, snapped a picture, and then descended down the trail into the park. After the second flood they had the trailhead closed off for repairs so the usual route I used to take with Rob and Matt was off limits; we followed a longer southern route that eventually linked up with the main trail I was used to and wound up at the river at the bottom. After a bathroom break we took out shoes off and cooled off in the river for a while, letting the fish nibble on our toes. Then we headed back up the trail and home into the air conditioning.
We made a quick run to Lowes for some bathroom caulk and Jen and I decided we needed a full-size plastic skeleton to sit on our front porch for Halloween, which made Finn happier than if we’d given her a barrel full of candy. Jen promptly christened him Brutus. We propped him up in the back of the Scout, and out on the road we were admonished by a fellow driver to make sure he was buckled up.
At home we relaxed for a bit and I tackled the back lawn, which was 5″ high and gone to seed. Every second row filled the bag on the mower and I’d have to stop and empty it, which took longer and made things hotter. I had sweat pouring down my face by the time I finished. Then I shot the plants in the greenhouse with more insecticidal soap to kill the whiteflies, which are now greatly diminished but have taken up residence on the tomatoes. After watering and tending to the plants I called it a day and came inside for the last time.
After cracking a cold beer we sat down and opened up a new family boardgame: Payday, which is an updated version of the game Renie and I used to play when we were Finn’s age. It’s more complicated now and doesn’t look nearly as cool as the original but we still had a lot of fun.
After dinner we busied ourselves with getting Finn ready for the first day of 4th grade. Jesus, time is flying by.
Nikon just released a new version of its camera-mounted slide digitizer, the ES-2. For about $140, it’s a barrel that mounts to either a 40mm or 60mm Nikon lens, with a slide tray and a film negative strip holder. Looks like it’s getting decent reviews, and only recently has it actually been in stock. As I’ve mentioned before, my Dad shot slide film almost exclusively so we’ve got boxes of family history waiting to be digitized. I’d have to buy an appropriate lens to match as well, but it’s a lot better than $2K for a dedicated machine.
I’m laying in a bed at Johns Hopkins with a tube down my nose and two IVs in my arm and port. I just had a hit of Toradol, which cuts the pain and swelling from the nasal tube in half and makes life somewhat livable for about an hour. Then I have to wait another five hours for the next shot. I’ve had an NG tube in my nose for 9 of the past 11 days so my sinuses are in full-on revolt: my left eyeball (on the tube side) feels like it wants to pop out of my skull and my head pounds with pressure. They can give me Tylenol to cut down on the headache but they will only give it to me as a suppository. At this point I’m ready to jam a woolly mammoth up my ass if that would provide any relief.
We were in the middle of our vacation week in Delaware, and I went to sleep on Monday evening after a lovely day on the beach and tasty dinner. I took a leak at around midnight and laid back down with some stomach pain, thinking I’d waited too long to pee. The next morning the pain hadn’t gone away so I drove myself to the urgent care in Lewes, who then referred me to the ER. So by the time I was seen by a professional it was around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. They shot a MRI and made me wait around until evening before sending me on my way, saying I just had some abdominal pain and that it would work itself out.
Wednesday morning was better, and during the day wasn’t too bad. I was able to get out on the beach with everybody. But after dinner, the pain came back and by midnight I had to wake Jen to drive me back to the ER. They looked me over again and immediately stuck an NG tube down my throat, which began suctioning sickly green fluid out of my stomach and providing immediate relief: I had a bowel obstruction.
Thus began a long cycle of laying and waiting and getting up and walking and peeing and praying for pooping. I shared a room the first night with a quiet guy who played FOX News all day and all night on his TV. He cleared out after the second day and was replaced with a giant kid in his mid-20’s who was admitted with severe pancreatitis, and who played Law and Order all day while he detoxed.
Jen stuck with me every day into every night, making sure I had everything I needed, making me walk the ward, holding my hand, and giving me the support I needed. She got the vacation house packed, arranged for Finn to stay at her sister’s house, rented a creepy AirBnB close to the hospital, completed a bunch of freelance work, and kept the family running while my gut slowly unkinked itself.
By the weekend I was beginning to see some movement in my bowels, and by Monday or Tuesday I started pooping: some of the stuff was working its way out but the MRIs and X-rays all showed it still was partially blocked. This was progress! I was proud of those poops! I took pictures of them on my phone to prove they had happened. BEHOLD, MY PROGENY. I have to remember to erase all of them now because nobody wanted to see them.
The doctors pulled my NG tube on Wednesday, clearly impressed with my pooping, and moved me up to clear liquids for food.
On Thursday they moved me up to “soft solid foods” and handed me a plate with four thick slices of turkey, beans, mashed potatoes and gravy for lunch. Having been withheld real food for over a week, I destroyed the turkey and potatoes. About two hours later my stomach was in full revolt. I finally got up to walk around, that jumpstarted my nausea, and I wound up throwing up half the meal into a pink bin. Later in the day the other half made its way out. I had to ask them to put the NG tube back in, which is equivalent to me asking for someone to chop my leg off.
Behind the scenes, Jen was in contact with my abdominal surgeon at Hopkins, and they started the wheels turning to get me moved to Baltimore. From what we were told I was going to have to wait a few days before a bed opened up but on Friday morning they told us I was leaving that evening. A crew of three EMTs showed up, strapped me to an uncomfortably narrow stretcher, and drove me via Dover back to Baltimore.
So where did this bowel obstruction come from? They tell me it’s a result of the surgery I had in December. Because they were in my abdomen and digging around during the surgery, and because they used radiation on all of the nearby tissue, there were scars and adhesions left on my intestines. This could have happened at any time but the doc we spoke to in Lewes told us this is exactly the time it would show up after the cancer surgery and treatment.
Things I have learned:
- NG tubes are an invention of Satan.
- I have a horse’s tolerance for morphine. They hit me with 4mg every four hours in Lewes and I swear it lasted about 1/2 hour. Toradol too–and Hopkins is chintzier with it: every six hours.
- The antibiotics I’ve been on make me weep like a baby. I couldn’t make it all the way through The Force Awakens last night: Great gasping sobs. A dish soap commercial about washing crude oil off ducklings: BAWLING.
- I have watched all of the episodes of NCIS I care to watch, ever.
- Nurses are amazing people and I have the utmost respect for them and their jobs. (I knew this already but it bears repeating).
- Modern television is 1 half programming, one quarter commercials, and one quarter restaurant commercials designed specifically to torture me. I don’t know what Nacho Fries are but I WILL HAVE THEM.
These shots are from Wednesday. I’ve been in the hospital since then with what the doctors tell me is a bowel obstruction; most likely a shitty side-effect of having major surgery on my abdomen. The kids have been having a great time and the weather has been great all week, so I’m glad everyone is able to get outside even if I’m stranded with an IV in my arm and a GI tube down my throat.
If this is the hardest decision I have to make tomorrow, I’m doing something right on our vacation.
