Yeah, it's been a while. Sorry, life's been real busy lately. Stephen called me the other day and I realized that I hadn't updated y'all on some things going on with me...and that I should.
The bad:
Well, some of you may remember I moved from Arizona to California to help take care of grandparents and my Aunt Carol who was greatly impaired by a stroke. Aunt Carol passed away about two weeks ago. It was a good thing overall. She died at home, surrounded by people she loved and who loved her.
About a month ago, I was going through a bout of insomnia and around three in the morning I noticed my feet tingling and numb, like sometimes happens when a foot, leg, or other body part 'falls asleep'. Only thing was...it was both of my feet. I went to sleep around four, and woke up at 8:15 in the morning. When I woke up, the numbness had spread up my legs and was now just below my knee caps. My first though was stroke, but it was both feet, not just one side and there were no other symptoms. I wanted to shrug it off and just stay home from work, figuring it would go away. My partner, Robert, insisted that I at least call the nursing hotline for my health plan, Kaiser Permanente.
He won, I called.
Long story short, she told me I could make an appointment to see my doctor, or I could go to the emergency room. She recommended going to the ER, so I would save myself a trip when the doctor sent me there. Robert drove me, and by this time I was barely able to walk (try walking when you can't feel anything below your knee caps. It's not fun). Of course, the ER was packed. It was the busiest day this Kaiser ER had seen in years. That's why it took an hour to see the nurse. Fifteen minutes later I was in a private ER room hooked up to monitors of all sorts with an IV line in me and twelve vials of blood out of me. Some teenager who had broken his arm was on a gurney in the hallway because they didn't have enough rooms, but me, I was stuck in a room.
At that point, it kind of became obvious that I was in serious trouble.
Boiling it down, I was diagnosed (after a spinal tap) with Guillian-Barre Syndrome. You can look it up on the net. There's a lot of documentation (about 1 in 100,000 come down with it). Essentially it's when your body's immune system malfuntions after a virus (and high stress levels don't help - which guess what I experience every day?). The immune system starts attacking the nerves, eating the sheath around them. The doctor gave me two treatment options. One was to have IGV treatments. IGV is made by taking blood cells from thousands of donors, pulling out part of the blood, and mixing it in this solution. Each day, for five days, I would receive of these IGV solutions (remember each one can have the blood of thousands of people in it). Obvious risks are HIV, Hepatitis, or other blood-borne pathogen. Option 2 was plasma phleuresis. That's where they stick a big needle in you, suck out your blood, run it through a centrifuge and seperate the white/red blood cells from plasma. Then they stick the blood cells back in you and throw out the plasma. That has a high risk of heart failure.
Since I can live with AIDS or Hepatitis or other pathogen for decades, but heart failure can be much more permanent, I chose option #1.
For five days I was in Intensive Care at the hospital. The numbness retreated quickly under treatment, and now I'm doing much, much better (and I destroyed any camera taking a picture of me having to use a walker to move around like an old man! I don't turn 36 until Sunday!). There is still occasional tingling in my feet, and my toes are still slightly numb, but it's far better than it was and it's not getting worse. While in the hospital, my diabetes went WAY out of control but is now battened down and behaving. I'm on so many meds that I use a damn pill-box to make sure I'm taking them right...but it's better than being dead (and yes, I have blood tests scheduled every three months for the next year to check and see if there's been transfer of a blood-borne pathogen).
The Good News:
Robert and I are still together, and doing well. After my sister and her kids visited with us last summer, we started talking about adopting one or two kids. We're getting our finances straightened up, looking at buying a house and really 'settling down' before we really act on that...but it's something we've both decided we want. He's still working for the California Democratic Party. I'm still working for a Democratic-leaning consulting firm (one of our projects is
www.savesanonofre.com). Also, I'm a delegate to the 2007 CDP convention in San Diego next month. That's going to be fun, especially since many of the presidential hopefuls just might be there (I'm wanting a picture with the Madame Speaker.)
Oh, and yeah, you see, there's this Sci-Fi script I've written that...well I can't say much but things are looking really good. Some people who were behind Farscape are taking a look, and we've gotten further than 'foot in the door' in a couple of places. It's television...and oh boy it would be nice to have my friends here telling me how awful a plot line was...or how the technology wouldn't work that way after watching an episode. I've had hopes on this one before...but I've never had to sign legal paperwork with studios and production companies before...and now I've had to do just that.
Um, and just in case...if you're ever watching an episode and remembering Hot & Spicy...all characters are fictional and not based on any person living or dead.
Topic: An Update on me...(TheJudge) (Read 8017 times)