Healthcare — Page 8

Be Compliant… or Else!

April 19, 2011

It’s sad to say, but I’m talking to/about myself with this one. I’ve been writing a post for 4 days now, but I’m in a completely different state of mind now, so I’ll post it later as a reflective piece. Today, I’m kicking butt and taking names again, but Friday wasn’t so much of the same.

I went for an unscheduled clinic visit Friday because Tuesday was a day of misery. I was wheezing and whistling. Each breath was labored. I was coughing up junk with each cough and I was having dozens of spazzes every day. The only things not happening were bleeding or fever.

I was down almost 10 lbs since Feb. 18th, but I blew the same PFTs: 35%. It didn’t make sense how I could feel this bad and still have 97% O2 sats while constantly being out of breath. 97%!! I don’t have that when I feel like a friggin’ ox!

The doctor came in and took a look at my numbers and what I wasn’t doing every day came from Sue… and me. He asked, “Why?”

Chronic entrepreneur

I’ve been under a lot of stress making sure we have enough money to pay our bills each month now that Beautiful stays home. The amount our budget has gone up since I worked in the office is profound, and now we’ve subtracted her income from the mix. It sure makes budgeting easier to just say, “This is how much you need to earn this month,” but I feel the physical effects of the stress in my lungs.

[Read more…]

Back Home Already

April 1, 2011

For those of you who don’t notice or subscribe to the normal “holiday” of April Fool’s Day, that’s when this was written and what it was written for. It is so far over the top, if you’re not laughing your head off, there is something wrong and you should go get it checked out. Enjoy!

I’m back home already from this morning’s bionic lung transplant! Wow, these new lungs are AMAZING!! Since they basically are ventilators, they didn’t need to put me on a vent or anything when I came out, so recovery was just a matter of hours. Also, without having a lot of foreign tissue taking up a lot of space, they said the swelling they expect didn’t require putting in drainage tubes, so they sent me home after I could eat a meal and go to the bathroom.

I highly recommend bionic lungs! Here are a few things I’ve noticed or done since I woke up:

I can sing the National Anthem in one breath.
There is a certain face I can make that causes the lungs to sound off like humpback whales.
When I jump up and down, they make a cartoon-like “boingy-boingy-boingy” noise.
Running all the way home from the hospital was very exhilarating, especially with all of the construction.
My vision is suddenly 20/20.
My farts smell like roses.

Excuse me, but I’m going to go list all of my equipment on eBay now.

Bionic Lungs: Opportunity of a Lifetime

April 1, 2011

Thursday ended with a huge bang with a call from my CF center to come in at 4am for an opportunity to be one of the first CF patients to receive bionic lungs! It’s been something I’ve thought about since the old movie “The Six Million Dollar Man” reruns back in the 80s. I’ve gone back and forth between wanting bionic lungs and lungs harvested from some sort of genetic clone of myself (like in Steven Cook’s “Chromosome 6“), only with healthy lungs, from something like a fast-growing monkey or pig that would eliminate the need for anti-rejection drugs. That’s what we’re all concerned about one way or another with a lung transplant anyway: rejection of the donor tissue or getting sick from a suppressed immune system.

They’ve been working on materials to coat implants of this size to avoid the body from attacking it as a foreign object and have finally figured it out. It’s coated with a polymer that mimics normal organ fascia. They discovered that fascia isn’t recognized by the immune system, only actual organs, so once encased in this polymer, it remains invisible to the immune system and it’s only connected to the body with proven materials used in stent and defibrillator surgeries.

The plan is to remove my lungs only after they test the system outside of my body, just in case there is an issue. That’s the beauty of this technique because they can hook it up with extra tubing for my circulatory system and pump room air into them, all from a table next to me, and only remove my lungs after everything checks out.

The super-cool thing is that the bionic lungs are 1/5 the size of natural lungs, so they are going to pack my body with a combination of bio-friendly styrofoam and expanding foam insulation [Read more…]

My New ENT: Dr. Mark Tabor

March 5, 2011

Yesterday was my 6th visit to Dr. Tabor, and he’s really growing on me. For those who are new to the “show,” I had the same ENT for nearly a decade before he retired, and he passed me on to his other CF-knowledgeable doctor in the same office. After my first surgery in 6 years followed by a continuation of my headaches and a bad CT scan, my CF doctors referred me to Dr. Tabor for a second opinion and treatment at the same hospital as clinic: Tampa General Hospital in the USF Health building.

He’s got a really high-tech endoscope system that puts the scope images onto a 17″ HD monitor and has the ability and willingness to record office cleanings and surgery in full HD for his geeky patients with a strong stomach. We had a mis-communication as I was about to go under for my 10th sinus surgery of my long and storied CF career so I will have to wait until my next time to get my hands on what happens when I’m asleep. I missed my septoplasty, but my next surgery will include drilling, which I think will be much more compelling footage… at least for me. Here is some fascinating, graphic video of the last cleaning I had before my January surgery. Thanks to my dad for editing it with my new iMovie ’11 when he was here in December. (Please do not hit play if you don’t want to see nose hairs, slimy mucous membranes, or boogers. Please do hit play if you are awesome.)