Swine Flu

With all of the fuss about the swine flu going on. I have to ask the question: Why do they hand out anti bacterial handwash when dealing with a virus?

Causes for fainting

Alex, as you may already know, fainted at work in the bathroom on Tuesday. We were compelled to go to the ER for the second time in two weeks and the doctor there said that it was most likely due to her taking Ultram, a perscription painkiller. Since Alex has had such a hard time in the past two weeks with her fall and her crazy ovaries, etc, etc... I decided to go online to find what I could on the condition.

What I found was pretty interesting. Apparently, sudden hypertension is the leading cause of fainting. In addition to cocaine induced hypertension, I found this article. Apparently licorice can cause fainting. Who'd have known?

My side of the story

Many of you have been following Alex's story about how I had apendicitis and almost died, so here's the pre-op to op story.

I got home from work on Monday at about 5:30 and had some leftover lasagna and proceeded to go about the normal business when all of the sudden, my stomach started hurting really bad. I had a really sharp pain right in below my ribs as if someone stabbed me. I went up to bed to lay down and rest it off and after that didn’t work, I came back downstairs. I started with a tiny puke, then I just started puking over and over again.

After a bit, I asked Alex to go to Walgreens and get me some pepto, which she did. In the meantime, I proceeded to hurl the rest of my dinner up. When Alex got back, I took some pepto and then, you guessed it, I puked that up too. After that I decided it was bad, so we went to Mercy After-hours. At this point I figured it was the left over lasagna, therefore food poisoning. The way it tasted while it came up sure made it seem that way, so I told the doctor that’s what I thought it was. He checked out my stomach and pressed a bit here and there for pain. When he pressed on my lower right side all of the sudden I had a dull pain there and I told him that it hurt when he pressed there. He said that he agreed with me that it was food poisoning and gave me a shot and a prescription for pain (which I have yet to take any of the medicine).

It turns out that the nausea shot did absolutely nothing for me. When I got home, I puked again and again, so finally I called Dad and asked him to come over to give me a blessing so that I could get to sleep. Dad and mom came over and I told them how my lower right hand side was hurting and they were very concerned and told me to go to the hospital.

So we went up to the hospital (12:30 AM). By now it was midnight and pouring rain, so we went in and I told the nurse that I thought I might have appendicitis and all of the sudden I had another nurse scoop me up in a wheelchair and I was whisked away to the ER. They laid me down on the bed and took some blood, gave me some shots for the nausea and some delotid (a pain medicine). After that I was feeling good. I got Dad to call Nate and they gave me a blessing.

I was then taken to radiology and they put dye up my you know what in order to get "contrast" in my bowels. They took pictures and then I was carted back to the ER.

A while later they came in and said that the white blood count was high and that the pictures were conclusive that it was apendicitis and that they wanted to operate ASAP. By now I was pretty much out of it (I am told that it was 4:30 AM). They told me that they would have me in the OR by 6:30 and took me to a room. I don’t remember much more except when I woke up at 6:30 with a super dry mouth and tons of pain. They doped me up with some morphine and then the doctor came personally and told me that I would have to wait a bit longer because he had to perform some other operations. After that I was out again.

Then next thing I knew I was in the prep room, Alex was changing my clothes to a gown, and I was wheeled into the OR onto a tiny table. They put some arm rests under my arm and then…

I woke up with a stinking tube in my nose to my stomach, a tube in my side, oxygen in my nose and oh yeah… stiches in my front.

It was a pretty wild ride. Don’t wish it on anyone, but it’s over now and I’m doing quite well. I had a drainage sack for a few extra days, but that came out today and I’m going back to work on Wednesday, so all in all not too bad.

Medicaid, a sign of what's to come with socialized medicine

I was watching Good Morning America (due to the fact that my wife likes the show) today and they were doing a piece on this little kid in New York who was dying from a heart condition. The condition (that I didn't pick the name up) has three different causes and there is a test that is administered by one single laboratory in the US. This laboratory had not applied "properly" for New York's medicaid program, however, and the kiddo couldn't get the test because, due to the paperwork hangups, New York wouldn't pay for it and his parents couldn't afford it. This was, according to GMA, due to the beurocracy in NY's medicaid program and according to NY due to the bureaucracy of the lab. Of course, since the media got into the picture, the problem has been solved, but my problem is that once this "holy" socialized medicine kicks in and this kind of crap becomes common place, will the media cover it or since it becomes common place will the media not care anymore?