Health Issues

Val’s having a series of ESI’s starting tomorrow. (epidural steroid injections) This spinal block will hopefully enable her to move around a bit, finish some of her art projects, and sit at the computer again. It’s been a year since her last series. I get pretty weirded out when she goes in for any kind of procedure, but at least we know what to expect with these. Dr. Harner (Carolina Arthritis Center in Greenville) also filled out a Certificate of Medical Necessity for a portable paraffin bath unit which will be here soon. We’ll get Val back up to speed and finish re-decorating the bedroom. She’s got some great ideas, strange but nice… the idea is to create a calm space for us.

So, I’ve been thinking recliners. La-Z-boy. I almost came up out of my chair when the Todd Oldham series came up on my monitor. Wow. One for Val, one for me… and the dogs can have the odd 1950s era dark blue Naugahyde chair/ottoman we bought at Remember When. Looking forward to seeing the room and will get photos of before and after once we really get into the project. Right now it’s the boring stuff — re-glazing 80 year old windows, stripping carpet, prepping walls for paint.

Not really… the blog title I mean. What I can tell you about neuropsychology can fit on the head of a pin, along with the innumerable dancing angels*. We’ve been cleaning out the all-over-the-house bookshelves and condensing them all to create the upstairs hallway library and research corridor. For the time being, here in my study, a book shelf Val’s dad made sits right in front of my desk, just behind my monitor. It’s where we’re piling the books awaiting their hall relocation . They’ve journeyd to this location from places in this house that I never knew were bookshelves… like the 1960s stereo cabinet in the living room. I always thought it was full of non-functioning out-dated stereo parts but no. Val tore the guts out of the cabinet about six months ago. After spending a few weeks as a truly bizarro box for Ollie to climb into and “do some good work, give me another piece of paper, please” play, the cabinet became a book storage unit. And that, my friends, is where the Introduction to Neuropsychology comes in. The stack about two feet from my face has these titles:
Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare
Beginning German: A Practical Approach
Physical Therapy Services in the Developmental Disabilities
the aforementioned tome
Conversational German
Readers Digest Condensed Books Vol. XXIII (Autumn 1955) containing, I shit you not, a book titled: This is Google. Now that I’ve noticed that bit of oddness, I have to stop writing and look at whatever that is. Were we having a phone conversation, this is the part where I’d say, “Let me get back to you, something’s come up…” but since you can’t know I’m going to be gone from here for a bit, let me just go on without a pause. I’m wrong. It’s This is GOGGLE or the Education of a Father by Bentz Plagemann. Okay. Never mind. Where was I?

Moving books. It’s tough, see, because we keep stopping to read them. Or Val will suddenly remember where a book came from — we have her grandfather’s Latin and Greek textbooks from Ohio Northern University, 1899, or it will be one of the 100 volumes I brought home from the Sisters of Mercy a couple years ago and those are books we just now have time to appreciate — the work is slow but not in any sense ponderous.

Val’s family made me a bibliophile. It took us six dwellings to settle on this one, six times moving her collection of books, each move becoming more onerous and heavy. We came to this old house (hey, what a great name for a PBS series) with three years of my wife working as reviewer, columnist, and books editor at Popmatters. There’s a couple large stacks of the”reviewed” books in one corner, waiting to be moved. My over 250 books (just guessing amount, I swear there are dozens of programming manuals, each one 2 inches thick and weighing in at at least 7 pounds plus all those books from the Catholic school’s book-sale, my purchases from the antique stores), leaning against another stack of books not reviewed but enjoyed by Val, (books sent to Val from publishers wanting a review), there’s our FC2 collection, Ruth’s books - a 90 years in the making stack or twelve (including ALL volumes of Will and Auriel Durant’s history of the world). Children’s books — The original Dr Seuss’s, Raggedy Ann and Andy’s, a huge bunch of pointless books waiting to be dissected and carved and turned into art by my eccentric but wonderful wife. Oh, must not forget the coffee table books by the German publisher Die Gestalten Verlag including our most favorite book in the world, their match-head sized “The World’s Smallest Book” in its wooden box. The coffee table is now a toddler-time play table, but eventually should return to grown-up use.

I’m exhausted just trying to define what we have, let alone put them on shelves (and dust them.) But the hallway is beginning to look truly wonderful. We’ve realized a big bonus in our walls o’ literature — Acoustics. Stairway sounds are now muffled as they travel insidiously toward the study, the bedroom… the shuffling Ruth, the washer/dryer, the dogs…

I wanted to write in more detail about what we have and will come back in a bit to link to some of the titles, but I must stop blogging because Washington and the Pamlico (our area’s contribution to the 1976 bicentennial commission books) is peeking out from under the American Heritage Dictionary. Bee looking for that book for a year! It has great local information — a front-porch storyteller’s history of the area.

*dancing angels? Ruth told me the Heinolds (or maybe the Chapmans? no matter) would argue about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. It was a discussion of faith, I believe.

Unfortunately, while chomping down on some Tex Mex at Mexican Burrito Restaurant last week — my filling decided to join the crispy corn toast-tee-toh. Since the restaurant and my family were over a 100 miles from our dentist, relief needed to be quick, temporary, and not interfere with my holiday. We finished our meal and headed out to find a pharmacy or wallyworld-type store. As luck would have it, a store in the same strip mall offered a 60-second fix — relief in the form of a temporary dental repair product.
Dentemp OS Quick. Painless. Effective. Six applications per vial. Cost-effective too. No mess, no mixing — just remove it from the plastic vial. And the stuff meets the FDA regulations for oral care. Just thirty minutes and it was time for dessert! The package says it can even be used to temporarily cement a crown. I’m going to have my wife keep a vial of Dentemp OS in her purse — just in case.

And I’m going to the dentist on Wednesday… Dentemp OS is temporary, remember.

Mr. Richard Paey, sentenced to 25 years in prison for illegal prescriptions is finally free from Florida jail. God Almighty! It’s about time. Richard suffers from intractable pain caused by multiple sclerosis and complications resulting from failed spinal surgery. He had served four years of his 25 year sentence in Florida State Prison for “illegal prescriptions”. According to the prosecutor, the prescriptions were illegal simply because they had been written or issued 6 weeks after Richard’s last medical exam. It was still drug trafficking, the jury was told. And they were persuaded to convict, yes it’s true, Mr. Paey. Unbelievable. I would sooo like to interview a member of that jury.

Get behind the Drug Policy Alliance. Spend an afternoon helping someone who lives with chronic debilitating pain if you don’t think this is important. Pain management has become a joke, a punch-line of derision shot out of the mouths of the uneducated and unfeeling masses. Uneducated about the amount of pain and suffering incurred by people with MS, cancer, fibromyalgia… the list includes hundreds of diseases and syndromes, unsympathetic and unthinking. Vicodin, percocet, tramadol, darvocet… another list to go right alongside the previous one.

The mere mention of these drugs produces a poke and a giggle response today. The need for pain management has become a punchline for a Rush Limbaugh joke or a defense tactic for the celebrity caught driving while under the influence. The highly publicized misuse of these medications created an intolerable set of laws meant to punish the abusers. The reality of our nation’s current drug policy is that people who suffer from “intractable pain” like can get caught up in the quagmire of unfeeling prosecuting attorneys, poorly written legislation, and an unsympathetic citizenry which remains apathetic and unmoved by the pleas of those who suffer from chronic pain.

*>stepping off my soap b — that is until my real soapbox arrives.
Please take a moment to understand the need for drug policy reform. In my home, we deal with chronic debilitating pain. I pray the same is not true for you.

In 2007 Fitts v. Fannie Mae the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Bipolar Disorder is a physical disorder and not a mental illness. I know someone with Bipolar Disorder and hope they read this information.

via: Equilibrium - The Bipolar Foundation

Equilibrium aims to become the foremost international partnership organisation working to advance the understanding, treatment and deal with the stigma and prejudice around bipolar disorder.

Equilibrium explicity recognises that bipolar disorder is an international problem and that there is an inherent need to develop models of health awareness and applicable and acceptable appproaches to treatment for non-westernised and developing nations:

• To create a unique collaborative centre and radiating network, of ‘patients,’ families, ‘clinicians,’ ‘researchers,’ and others interested in bipolar disorder. The Foundation’s aim is for this network to truly work together to advance the understanding and treatment of bipolar disorder through the real time sharing of ideas and innovations
• To promote early recognition of bipolar illness through public and professional education
• To help destigmatise bipolar disorder
• To promote excellence in treatment of bipolar disorder
• To support and fund research into the causes of bipolar illness, its diagnosis and treatment
• To prioritise research by liaison between professionals and the people affected by this illness.

I need help and I need it FAST. An air ambulance. Perhaps a Leer jet? Medical rescue for Hortense, a charter flight to lift her spirits and her bodily form. Ahhhhh! I’ll use one of the Internets. Surely there’s a fast way, a quick search, which will give me all the information I need.

On a whim and a prayer, I typed in airambulance.net. Damned if Firefox didn’t pull up all the information I needed! Even an 800 number to arrange the flight. Thanks AirAmbulance. I’ll meet you at the airport in just a few scant minutes. The paramedics are loading Hortense into the back of the rescue unit as I type. Thank the Internets gods for a one-stop information center like the air ambulance website. I saved so much time by not having to skip all over creation looking for medical transport faqs and the handy dispatch info. Sounds like a responsible, trustworthy company to me.

“I am coming, Hortense! We’ll get to you Chicago in no time! Hold fast, dearie!”

Grabbing my stockton’s arborical, I lance my carbuncle and head out the door.
***
You’re wondering how  things got so out of hand, aren’t you? It was the usual Porteous family frackus… read on, dear friends:

“Call your Uncle Frank,” my Great Aunt Fanny tells me. “He knows everything health-related. If you got a question, Frank’s the one to answer it. He spent four years in the Marines, Korea you know. Worked in a MASH unit. The man’s a walking Funk and Wagnalls.”

I look at her and nod. “Right you are, my dear one. Fetch me his phone number toot sweet. While you search your bag, I shall mogait the the vestibule and procure for us a couple tall glasses of Mother Hazel’s sweet tea. Chop chop!”

She begins to dig in her rucksack, flinging its contents on the marble side table near her chair. “Oh goodness… where is that number? I need my notepad. Ooo! Oooo! I wondered where I left Smardella! Look here! How long have you been in here, dearie?” She’s talking to a Norwegian dwarf rabbit. “Judging from the looks of my rucksack, it must have been all morning. You’ve eaten all the paper and there are only a couple shards of carrot left in my eyeglass case.”

It is then I realize just how little assistance she can render anyone. Time for reinforcements. Entering the vestibule, I spot my Grandfather Normal coming in from the alpaca’s gladiola garden. He sees me and says, “We’ll need air transport this time, I’m afraid. It’s more than poison smalchwod. Shall I charter a flight? We’ll definitely need medical rescue. I’m out of salve. No ointment anywhere in this compound; it’s tragic. What type of escort service shal we use? Patient transport certainly differs these days from when your cousin Lemuel had a mule and a cart, eh? Remember when the hospital was above the vaudevile theater? When Doctor Fitzwilliger removed my appendix, I woke up to Dancing MacFarland and his Nine Ducks. Great act…” Winded, he sits on the bust of Alexander Graham Bell.

“Is Hortense critical?” I ask, alarmed and sedate. “Great Aunt Fanny is soon to provide me with Uncle Frank’s phone number, he will know what to do. He was in the Marines, spent four years with a MASH unit in Korea.”

Grandfather stares at me. “Are you daft? Your Uncle Frank’s been in a sanitarium for twelve years. He thinks he’s an eggplant and steals Parmesan cheese from the other patients. He’ll be of no use to anyone in a medical emergency.” He wheezes his way upstairs, waving the New York Times Sunday edition at me. “Tomorrow is my birthday, buy me a whale.”