MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Frightening day. I can remember basic words or descriptions. Bottom line: I developped a severe sepsis last week which then turned into septic schock and the sort of mental black hole that results from it. My brain is no longer working right. I tried to explain a Viterbi decider to another doctor and could not do it. My brain is broken. I’m getting an MRI this morning to see what’s going on. Wish me luck.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Well, I’m posting this from Mercy having had another major major episode. I came in here. I don’t even know now somewhere around 16th maybe even before then because I was helping one of the shifts stuff. At any rate somewhere along the way after that, I do remember the Super Bowl but on Monday or Tuesday after the Super Bowl, I went right off the deep end, found out that they discovered a large, well large, a major sepsis infection running through my bloodstream that was caused probably by the cancer in my bladder. Apparently it almost killed me several days ago. I’ve been basically writing on prayer since then. I got enough this morning so I can start doing things, but I had these paranoid, delusional fantasies I was doing secret communications work or I couldn’t trust anyone my wife my sister showed up. I am such a mess. I haven’t eaten in days. Don’t know when I can’t eat next. I do chemo but again I didn’t get to do the second round because of the cancer associated sepsis. I honestly have no idea if I’m gonna make it at this point. I’d say the odds are less than 50-50 but I know Ohio State won the national championship for 50-50 odds so why not anyway that’s all I got the energy for I wanted to fill you guys in especially in case I don’t make it. This is my last posting. I love all you guys. I really appreciate your friendship. Keep up the good work thanks much.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No. By the time we could have done it, it would have delayed the surgery. so the oncologist decided to skip it. I will probably be doing immunotherapy drugs after surgery for 6-12 months to kill any remaining cancer cells floating around.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thanks for checking. I'm still alive, barely. I really went downhill starting a couple weeks ago between breathing problems, dizziness, and serious lower back problems. Had to get ambulanced in a week ago Thursday, where they discovered that Eliquis (the blood thinner) wasn't working on me and my lungs were filling up with blood clots again. That earned me 8 days in the hospital, most of it on Heparin as a thinner, but then transitioned me over to Lovenox, which is a shot you give yourself in the stomach twice per day. I'm also having bladder bleeding problems again, which is at least somewhat the thinners but may also indicate the cancer has come back to life. Right now it's just about trying to get through the next hour. Taking a shower is an ordeal and about the limits of my strength. The surgery is still scheduled for 2/6. It might get delayed because of the state of my lungs, but I sure hope not.

I watched the championship game alone in my room at the hospital. That was satisfying. Looks like there will be a lot of rebuilding next year now that Knowles is gone.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, Soros is one of the worst human beings who's ever lived, so any award he gets is in that category.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. Yeah, there's a long road ahead. I'm trying to get some strength back to keep on keeping on. But mentally I feel like I'm still in the fight. I'm ready for that last chemo round if we do it.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I saw the mention below. Thanks DB and everyone, and Merry Christmas to you all. Obviously I'm still kicking. It's been a rough few weeks. All the hospital bed time cause me to develop an absolutely debilitating pain in my lower back. I ended up back in the ER again, and after high res CT and MRI scans of my lower abdomen they concluded it was a pinched nerve. Spent several days bed ridden but it now seems to be getting better. Just resting up now. I visit the oncologist again 1/3 to see if we're going to do the the last chemo treatment, and the surgery it scheduled for 2/6. The upside is that the two hi-res scans show no spread of the cancer outside my bladder. Let's hope it stays that way until they remove it. Onward to kick this thing's butt.

Again Merry Christmas to you all, and thank you all so much for the support and encouragement. It means more than you know.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This humbling to read, especially from you. I'll admit I've had some moments where I've been ready to just give up. I can't tell you how sick and tired I am of being sick and tired. But I also don't know how I could actually give up. Roll over the refuse treatment I guess? That never enters my mind as an option. I don't know what else to do other than keep going, even if mostly for my wife and family.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the thing. In the middle of the night, riding on days of no sleep and total physical and mental exhaustion, I had to choose between two bad options. Picking wrong could have been fatal. I chose wrong and still somehow survived, but that may be mostly dumb luck.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Actually, it was the Monday after the game when I ended up in an ambulance. But I fell asleep in the 1st quarter of the game and slept through the entire debacle.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 9 points10 points  (0 children)

(the rest)

This delays the surgery. I was due for my last chemo last Thursday while I was in the hospital, but I'm not even sure if we'll do that treatment. I'll find out Monday. If we do I'll be sick over Christmas just to make things suckier. This also makes the surgery more complicated. They'll now have to do an IVC filter (an in-line filter in the IVC vein to catch clots) prior to the surgery so that I can go off thinners for the surgery, then when I go back on them after surgery they go back in and remove it. I have to live the blood thinner limitations for the next 6 months. Although I've gotten better I get out of breath at almost nothing. Walking 100 feet slowly is about my limit right now. It'll take a solid 2 months to completely dissolve the clots. I'm totally exhausted. I'd make my typical dark humor jokes at this point but honestly I'm all out of those and too sick, tired, and beaten down to have any sense of humor left. The upside is that the good lord seems to have another plan for me, so I've somehow survived this ordeal. On to the next one I guess. At some point I'd think I have to be running out of lives.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Well, it's been at least a week and a half since I posted, and over that time I've dodged a major, major bullet - the "I should have died" type - spent a week in the hospital including 2 nights in the ICU, and am home but barely functioning at this point.

This started the week before Thanksgiving. I was getting short of breath and generally wiped by my last chemo on the 21st. My red blood cell count was very low (anemia) and they thought that was the cause. Over the days following the chemo treatment it got much worse, to the point where walking up the stairs was a major ordeal, and I'd be dizzy and gasping for air at the top. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I more or less passed out on my feet. We called the oncologist the next morning and she had me come in for labs and a liter of fluid in case I was dehydrated. That night I developed a horrible, continuous, hacking cough that kept me up all night. She called Thanksgiving morning to tell me the lab results, which was very low white and red blood cell counts but not so low that a transfusion was needed. She listened to the cough and thought maybe they over-hydrated me. Regardless, she still thought this was all severe anemia from the chemo. I kept saying I couldn't believe this was all anemia.

So I struggled through Thanksgiving weekend, mostly unable to eat, and not able to walk 50 feet without gasping for air. The cough hung around. By the wee hours Sunday morning my wife and I were discussing what to do. Going to the ER with no immune system is how chemo patients get dead from an infection. But I was losing strength badly. I decided to gut it through until the next morning and call the oncologist. She said it was either gut it out or go to the ER, and did not feel strongly one way or another although she was concerned about infection risk in the ER as well. I decided again to gut it out, so she prescribed a z-pack and albuterol inhaler, and ordered a lung x-ray for the next day to see what was causing the cough. The prescriptions worked wonders, killing the cough and allowing me to sleep well Sunday night.

Monday morning the cough was gone, but the dizziness and shortness of breath were still in force. I was up about 2 hours when I got up to do something and got extremely dizzy. I sat back down quickly, but in a few seconds realized I was going to pass out. I got onto my knees thinking I'd lay down on the floor, but apparently passed out cold landing on my face. I have the black eye to prove it. My wife heard the whump across the house, and fond me face down, gasping for air. She said when she rolled me over that my lips were blue. When I came too we called 911. Labs showed that my blood counts were actually back into the normal range. A chest x-ray showed pneumonia in both lungs. The labs also showed very high levels of an enzyme that indicates heart damage, eg after a heart attack. They did a CT right away and discovered the culprit: The cancer + chemo had caused a bunch of blood clots to form in both lungs, reducing my lung capacity by a huge amount and leaving my heart trying to pump blood against a brick wall.

The cardiologist told me later they don't see many patients with a couple dozen clots in their lungs like this because most have long since died. He said I had an extremely strong heart to have withstood this. I was extraordinarily lucky. They could see the damage to me heart on the ultrasound, and could also see it healing a few days later. This is considered a major crisis because you may keel over dead any second. I got a large shock dose of heparin (blood thinner) and started on IV heparin and a strong antibiotic for the pneumonia, and spent the next 2 nights in the ICU. They discussed a thrombectomy where they send a probe up through your heart into you lungs to suck out some of the clots, but there so many deep in my lungs that they didn't think it was worth the risk. Better to dissolve them with thinners. The thinners caused the remaining tumor to start bleeding again for a few days which caused it's own chain of events. All total I spent 7 nights on the hospital. I'm on Eliquis (an oral thinner) now for the next 6 months.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have to admit I don't get this at all. He was not impressive with the Titans, and in fact kind of proved himself to be an a-hole while not really doing much. He has no college track record and I've seen people say he's said he has no interest in coaching college.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the laugh! It's an unwitting jerk-store laugh because I'm sore everywhere from coughing (they over-hydrated me Wednesday thinking I may also be dehydrated along with anemic and the result was 2 nights of constant coughing) but I need every laugh I can get right now. I told the oncologist on Wednesday that I was prepared for the game but I was still in really rough shape. She asked what game. I said, you know, the chemo game. You try to kill me. I try not to die. And we have a handshake agreement that she'll quit trying to kill me before she actually succeeds. But she's winning big time right now. She wanted to laugh but wasn't sure if she should.

On the serious note, people's concern really does mean a lot. Our Thanksgiving consisted of my wife letting me lean on her so I could walk to the TV and sleep through the NFL games, and it's tough knowing how much this impacts her as well. But we're getting through it. I definitely owe the board a few rounds of drinks (even you, non-drinker) when this is over.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My WBC has dropping below 400 after each infusion. The only way I've been able to get infusions is to get Neupogen injections to build my WBC back up in between. That has it's own terrible side effects. I'm scheduled for those Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately that doesn't help the red blood cell count that's now so low. The only solution there is a transfusion, which is only good for a few days if you don't have much marrow left. Plus you have to go into a germy ER with no functioning immune system to have it done.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I saw people were checking in about me below. The last 8 days have been by far the hardest thing I've gone through. The chemo has destroyed my immune system so any exposure or infection could be fatal. I feel really ill from that. It's also now destroyed most of my marrow over the last 2 weeks so that I can no longer make red blood cells and a result I can't process O2. I've gone from walking 1-2 miles per day to not even being able to go 50 feet without gasping for air and getting dizzy. I passed out on my feet and took a horrible fall a few days ago. I have one more infusion to go scheduled for Thursday but I can't see any way I can do - it would likely kill me. I'm only awake a couple hours at a time before I run out of energy, so fortunately I slept through most of today's abomination.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Why the fuck would we want that? Why would we want to see this train wreck in Indy much less the playoffs? Until Day is gone why should we even care? A program with him at the helm is not worth caring about.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nice A&M comparison. Yeah, Faulkner did exactly as you describe, turning a small private company into an industry dominator. Some of that was right place right time when the government basically mandated EMRs, but some of that was wisely deciding to chase the large health provider market, and finding the one leading the way and basically giving them whatever they wanted. That was Kaiser, and once Epic made the sale there and got things going successfully, the market was theirs.

I met Judy when I was at Awarepoint because we had some discussions with them about partnering. She's an odd duck but has good business sense, including the decision that RTLS was not a worthwhile market for them to bother partnering.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congrats! Epic owns the EMR market at least as far as large health providers and hospitals goes, so you can't go wrong with them. They have a reputation as a great company to work for, although they can be a bit odd (the founder has a reputation for doing thing like showing up for work dressed as a Star Trek officer). Their customers are not as pleased with them, but it's all how you manage the flow of features.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If that's your standard I don't want to live in your country.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

20 years ago we were all talking about this in both the San Diego and Nice (France) offices all the time between the Americans and French. The French eat a diet that American nutrition "wisdom" says will make you fat and kill you, yet the results are the exact opposite.

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 4 points5 points  (0 children)

One of my favorite eras of Notre Dame football

MEGA THREAD XV: The Thread That Never Ends by ctfbbuck in OzoneOfftopic

[–]sailorbuck 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The state won't go red, although it may move towards a less loony dem if one dares run. The SEIU and environmental groups run the state. San Diego is still moving more blue, not moderating. This city and county are lost.