Hey there! Haven't been around in a while. I wanted to update you all on my year so far, because it's been relatively interesting, I think. I keep putting off writing the update, though, so at least starting this thread will remind me to do it already.
I dunno how much some of you have heard through backchannels or other social media about some of the more significant events, but regardless, I hope to make it a compelling, exciting story for all to enjoy!
2024
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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Re: 2024
2024
PART 1!
On February 26, 2024, I became enlightened.
In more modern parlance, this is usually now called “awakening”. I dislike both of these terms intensely, because they imply something mystical, esoteric, “spiritual”, or even – God forbid – religious. It is none of those things.
The best I can describe it is a psychological shift in which the conceptual map of the “world”, life, whatever this is, which has been taken for granted as truth since childhood, dissolves, or is at least seen through, and replaced by something much more natural and verifiable, and leaving no confusion or questions in its wake, only wonderment.
This is a real thing, experienced by millions, and they/we all report the exact same things. So, if I went crazy, then at least I have lots of company. Assuming your eyes have not rolled back into your head too far, and have any interest, I’m happy to talk about this separately. Books such as this and (my personal favorite) this go into the nuts and bolts of it, without clouding it with a bunch of hocus-pocus nonsense, which is what happens 99%+ of the time, usually because someone is selling something.
To drive the point home that it’s nothing so spectacular as popular culture would have you believe, it did not occur after weeks of deep meditation under a tree at the top of a mountain, it occurred in the produce section of a Kroger grocery store. I did not begin levitating. Rays of golden sunshine did not shoot from my eyes. I did stop for a moment to let sink in what had happened. Then I think I let out a little bemused giggle, then finished shopping, checked out, drove home and went to work.
At any rate, what followed was a period of amazing freedom that I had not experienced before. It manifested outwardly as a more outgoing personality – I’d easily start chatting with people in said Kroger stores. I’d call people on the phone I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. My relationship with my wife improved by leaps and bounds, and in every way possible (if you know what I mean.) All urges to improve my experience with mind-altering substances dissolved completely. As I said at the time, before I would drink to feel like this, but now this was the starting point, so, nothing more to do. My favorite thing to do, the most fulfilling experience I could have, was to just sit outside in a chair, and do nothing.
As with any new toy, though, eventually the shine wears off, and things settle back down to normal. It was seen clearly that although the initial experience was full of relief, freedom and fascination, it is not an escape from anything. Problems still arise. Frustrations still frustrate. Fear, sadness, anger and horror are all still on the menu, and there’s no way out.
If I had any doubts about that, those doubts would be shortly be ripped apart.
PART 2!
My daughter Mina was to start seventh grade on August 17th. The week before, though, she started not feeling too good. She was sluggish, didn’t really want to do much of anything except lie in bed and watch her tablet. She would occasionally throw up after meals. Assuming some sort of bug, we got her OTC meds and just said, rest up so you can be better in time for school!
She did not get better, though, and on August 16th, she called out to me from the bottom of the stairs. She was unable to walk up. I went down and assisted her up the stairs and to her bed, where she just lied there pretty catatonic for the next couple hours. Attempts to rouse her, or even touch her, resulted in her crying out in pain. When Kathy got home, we said, okay, no more fucking around. We called 911, and the ambulance took her to the Cincinnati Childrens ER up in our neck of the woods.
She got fluids, antibiotics, etc. over the next two days, but all of her tests came back negative. Her WBC count was high, so she was definitely fighting something, but nobody knew what, so we were just hoping whatever it was would run its course.
Two days later, she became completely unresponsive. She went to the bathroom, then on the way back, fell asleep, and dropped to the floor. Nobody could wake her up. That’s when they got on the batline to the ICU in downtown Cincinnati, and decided that night to move her down there.
The first thing they did was an MRI, which finally showed the problem. Her brain had been ravaged by a bacterial infection (soon we had the name: streptococcus anginosus). Multiple abscesses everywhere you looked. They drilled two holes in her head to drain the fluid that was creating tremendous pressure in her skull, while they began the course of antibiotics.
Soon that wasn’t enough. She was put into a medical coma. They cut part of her skull away to continue helping to relieve the pressure.
Meanwhile Kathy and I still had to keep running back and forth to the house, to take care of dogs, to pack stuff up for her hospital stay. For the first couple weeks, I kept the door to Mina’s room closed because at that point I assumed that the next time we went in there would be to clear it out.
After my experiences earlier in the year, all of my fears had been assuaged, all except one, which was that something horrible would happen to our adorable little girl. Almost as if to prove a point, life made sure I got to face it.
Miraculously, she kept kickin’, though, and eventually they were able to slowly wake her back up, still with tubes everywhere and drains pulling spinal fluid out of her head. MRIs and CTs over the coming weeks would show slow but steady progress on the abscesses. After about 4 weeks in ICU, she was able to be moved to the “Neuro” floor, where they would just continue the course of antibiotics, continue to monitor her neurological activity, continue to monitor the drains still hooked into her skull.
After another month or so of that same slow and steady progress, she finally got her drains removed, and was starting to actually get back to being herself, able to speak and sing and color and use her tablet, so she moved one more time to the “rehab” floor, which is where I’m currently typing this from. Here she gets therapies every day, is able to get up and walk with a walker, go to the bathroom, and start to have a real life again. She’s weak and shaky, but the smile is back, and though we still have a long road ahead of us, she is a fighter and I’m confident she’ll continue to amaze us and be the most beautiful, special, funny, cute, inspiring person I’ve ever met. She’ll be getting that part of her skull replaced on Friday, and will come back home a week or so later.
I lied, though. I did have one more fear. That something horrible would happen to me, leaving me unable to care for Mina and her mom. Which brings us to…
PART 3!
I’ll keep this one short because we’re still right in the middle of this story, and I don’t know how it’s gonna end.
About a month ago, I started feeling pretty bad. The medical term I think is “malaise”. No energy. Constipated. Felt a pressure in my gut, and occasional significant discomfort in my abdomen. I guessed at a whole bunch of things, maybe I just needed a bunch of laxatives. I tried that, and it seemed to work for a while, but not long. Maybe I was just dehydrated. I tried sticking to a gallon-a-day regimen. It seemed to work for a while, but not long. Maybe it was acid/gas buildup. I tried Mylanta, which seemed to work for a while, but not long.
Two Wednesdays ago (October 23), I had to call in sick to work because I could barely get out of bed, and the abdominal pain was now severe and unrelenting. At the demand of friends and family, I went to the ER. After a few hours of waiting, the pain became so intense that I felt I was on the brink of passing out. That got their attention. My blood pressure was 180/120. They rolled me back for a quick CT scan of my abdomen, and put me in a room.
After an hour or so, a doctor came in to tell me that I had a blood clot in my kidney, so they’d have to keep me at the hospital a day or two to administer blood thinner.
I said, “Okay.”
An hour later, the doctor came back in to say, after looking at the scan a little closer, I also had kidney cancer.
I said, “Okay.”
After two days in the hospital, they sent me home with oral blood thinners, and set up an appointment for me to meet with the urologist to decide what to do. He then set up a biopsy (for this Thursday, November 14th) to figure out what kind of cancer it is and what to do about it.
These past couple weeks have been… challenging, to say the least. All of a sudden I’m faced with the prospect of these problems, you know, “working themselves out”, if you catch my drift. I am not scared for myself, but for Kathy and Mina. The pain was extreme for the first week and a half and I could only stave it off with a healthy regimen of Tylenol and Oxycodone, which replaces pain with the complete inability to do anything, even though – remember now – this whole time I’m also running back and forth to Mina’s hospital, and trying to hold down a job, etc.
The blood thinners continued to do their thing, and let me tell you something: If you’ve never peed out dried, bloody chunks out your pee-hole while in the bathroom of your daughter’s hospital room, man, you just haven’t lived.
As of this writing, the pee chunks are done with. The pain is not too bad, and I’m able to keep it at bay just with Tylenol. However, my blood pressure runs extremely high, all day long, and I usually have enough energy to make it to about lunchtime, but then it falls off the cliff. That’s why I’m writing this in the morning.
Thursday will tell us more. There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful – I don’t show any other symptoms, my bloodwork is fine, my pee is fine, I can still walk and do stuff and you know, am in perfect health other than a kidney eating me alive from the inside. And the CT scan showed it was localized, and I was told that kidney cancer tends to be very slow growing anyway.
But who knows. 2024 has been, if nothing else, full of surprises.
EPILOGUE!
Oh, somewhere in the middle of parts 2 and 3, my company laid off about 25% of the workers remaining from an earlier layoff. I dodged the bullet again, which is good, because without insurance we’d collectively already be on the hook for, I’m guessing, over a million dollars.
Also America re-elected a manifestly irresponsible, criminal, retarded game show host. This would have been more upsetting any other year, but we got bigger fish to fry, as they say.
Other than that, everything’s great!
PART 1!
On February 26, 2024, I became enlightened.
In more modern parlance, this is usually now called “awakening”. I dislike both of these terms intensely, because they imply something mystical, esoteric, “spiritual”, or even – God forbid – religious. It is none of those things.
The best I can describe it is a psychological shift in which the conceptual map of the “world”, life, whatever this is, which has been taken for granted as truth since childhood, dissolves, or is at least seen through, and replaced by something much more natural and verifiable, and leaving no confusion or questions in its wake, only wonderment.
This is a real thing, experienced by millions, and they/we all report the exact same things. So, if I went crazy, then at least I have lots of company. Assuming your eyes have not rolled back into your head too far, and have any interest, I’m happy to talk about this separately. Books such as this and (my personal favorite) this go into the nuts and bolts of it, without clouding it with a bunch of hocus-pocus nonsense, which is what happens 99%+ of the time, usually because someone is selling something.
To drive the point home that it’s nothing so spectacular as popular culture would have you believe, it did not occur after weeks of deep meditation under a tree at the top of a mountain, it occurred in the produce section of a Kroger grocery store. I did not begin levitating. Rays of golden sunshine did not shoot from my eyes. I did stop for a moment to let sink in what had happened. Then I think I let out a little bemused giggle, then finished shopping, checked out, drove home and went to work.
At any rate, what followed was a period of amazing freedom that I had not experienced before. It manifested outwardly as a more outgoing personality – I’d easily start chatting with people in said Kroger stores. I’d call people on the phone I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. My relationship with my wife improved by leaps and bounds, and in every way possible (if you know what I mean.) All urges to improve my experience with mind-altering substances dissolved completely. As I said at the time, before I would drink to feel like this, but now this was the starting point, so, nothing more to do. My favorite thing to do, the most fulfilling experience I could have, was to just sit outside in a chair, and do nothing.
As with any new toy, though, eventually the shine wears off, and things settle back down to normal. It was seen clearly that although the initial experience was full of relief, freedom and fascination, it is not an escape from anything. Problems still arise. Frustrations still frustrate. Fear, sadness, anger and horror are all still on the menu, and there’s no way out.
If I had any doubts about that, those doubts would be shortly be ripped apart.
PART 2!
My daughter Mina was to start seventh grade on August 17th. The week before, though, she started not feeling too good. She was sluggish, didn’t really want to do much of anything except lie in bed and watch her tablet. She would occasionally throw up after meals. Assuming some sort of bug, we got her OTC meds and just said, rest up so you can be better in time for school!
She did not get better, though, and on August 16th, she called out to me from the bottom of the stairs. She was unable to walk up. I went down and assisted her up the stairs and to her bed, where she just lied there pretty catatonic for the next couple hours. Attempts to rouse her, or even touch her, resulted in her crying out in pain. When Kathy got home, we said, okay, no more fucking around. We called 911, and the ambulance took her to the Cincinnati Childrens ER up in our neck of the woods.
She got fluids, antibiotics, etc. over the next two days, but all of her tests came back negative. Her WBC count was high, so she was definitely fighting something, but nobody knew what, so we were just hoping whatever it was would run its course.
Two days later, she became completely unresponsive. She went to the bathroom, then on the way back, fell asleep, and dropped to the floor. Nobody could wake her up. That’s when they got on the batline to the ICU in downtown Cincinnati, and decided that night to move her down there.
The first thing they did was an MRI, which finally showed the problem. Her brain had been ravaged by a bacterial infection (soon we had the name: streptococcus anginosus). Multiple abscesses everywhere you looked. They drilled two holes in her head to drain the fluid that was creating tremendous pressure in her skull, while they began the course of antibiotics.
Soon that wasn’t enough. She was put into a medical coma. They cut part of her skull away to continue helping to relieve the pressure.
Meanwhile Kathy and I still had to keep running back and forth to the house, to take care of dogs, to pack stuff up for her hospital stay. For the first couple weeks, I kept the door to Mina’s room closed because at that point I assumed that the next time we went in there would be to clear it out.
After my experiences earlier in the year, all of my fears had been assuaged, all except one, which was that something horrible would happen to our adorable little girl. Almost as if to prove a point, life made sure I got to face it.
Miraculously, she kept kickin’, though, and eventually they were able to slowly wake her back up, still with tubes everywhere and drains pulling spinal fluid out of her head. MRIs and CTs over the coming weeks would show slow but steady progress on the abscesses. After about 4 weeks in ICU, she was able to be moved to the “Neuro” floor, where they would just continue the course of antibiotics, continue to monitor her neurological activity, continue to monitor the drains still hooked into her skull.
After another month or so of that same slow and steady progress, she finally got her drains removed, and was starting to actually get back to being herself, able to speak and sing and color and use her tablet, so she moved one more time to the “rehab” floor, which is where I’m currently typing this from. Here she gets therapies every day, is able to get up and walk with a walker, go to the bathroom, and start to have a real life again. She’s weak and shaky, but the smile is back, and though we still have a long road ahead of us, she is a fighter and I’m confident she’ll continue to amaze us and be the most beautiful, special, funny, cute, inspiring person I’ve ever met. She’ll be getting that part of her skull replaced on Friday, and will come back home a week or so later.
I lied, though. I did have one more fear. That something horrible would happen to me, leaving me unable to care for Mina and her mom. Which brings us to…
PART 3!
I’ll keep this one short because we’re still right in the middle of this story, and I don’t know how it’s gonna end.
About a month ago, I started feeling pretty bad. The medical term I think is “malaise”. No energy. Constipated. Felt a pressure in my gut, and occasional significant discomfort in my abdomen. I guessed at a whole bunch of things, maybe I just needed a bunch of laxatives. I tried that, and it seemed to work for a while, but not long. Maybe I was just dehydrated. I tried sticking to a gallon-a-day regimen. It seemed to work for a while, but not long. Maybe it was acid/gas buildup. I tried Mylanta, which seemed to work for a while, but not long.
Two Wednesdays ago (October 23), I had to call in sick to work because I could barely get out of bed, and the abdominal pain was now severe and unrelenting. At the demand of friends and family, I went to the ER. After a few hours of waiting, the pain became so intense that I felt I was on the brink of passing out. That got their attention. My blood pressure was 180/120. They rolled me back for a quick CT scan of my abdomen, and put me in a room.
After an hour or so, a doctor came in to tell me that I had a blood clot in my kidney, so they’d have to keep me at the hospital a day or two to administer blood thinner.
I said, “Okay.”
An hour later, the doctor came back in to say, after looking at the scan a little closer, I also had kidney cancer.
I said, “Okay.”
After two days in the hospital, they sent me home with oral blood thinners, and set up an appointment for me to meet with the urologist to decide what to do. He then set up a biopsy (for this Thursday, November 14th) to figure out what kind of cancer it is and what to do about it.
These past couple weeks have been… challenging, to say the least. All of a sudden I’m faced with the prospect of these problems, you know, “working themselves out”, if you catch my drift. I am not scared for myself, but for Kathy and Mina. The pain was extreme for the first week and a half and I could only stave it off with a healthy regimen of Tylenol and Oxycodone, which replaces pain with the complete inability to do anything, even though – remember now – this whole time I’m also running back and forth to Mina’s hospital, and trying to hold down a job, etc.
The blood thinners continued to do their thing, and let me tell you something: If you’ve never peed out dried, bloody chunks out your pee-hole while in the bathroom of your daughter’s hospital room, man, you just haven’t lived.
As of this writing, the pee chunks are done with. The pain is not too bad, and I’m able to keep it at bay just with Tylenol. However, my blood pressure runs extremely high, all day long, and I usually have enough energy to make it to about lunchtime, but then it falls off the cliff. That’s why I’m writing this in the morning.
Thursday will tell us more. There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful – I don’t show any other symptoms, my bloodwork is fine, my pee is fine, I can still walk and do stuff and you know, am in perfect health other than a kidney eating me alive from the inside. And the CT scan showed it was localized, and I was told that kidney cancer tends to be very slow growing anyway.
But who knows. 2024 has been, if nothing else, full of surprises.
EPILOGUE!
Oh, somewhere in the middle of parts 2 and 3, my company laid off about 25% of the workers remaining from an earlier layoff. I dodged the bullet again, which is good, because without insurance we’d collectively already be on the hook for, I’m guessing, over a million dollars.
Also America re-elected a manifestly irresponsible, criminal, retarded game show host. This would have been more upsetting any other year, but we got bigger fish to fry, as they say.
Other than that, everything’s great!
Am I a hero? I really can't say. But, yes.
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Flack
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Re: 2024
Wow, what a rollercoaster! I was happy to read about the benightment (if our goal on this planet isn't to find happiness, what is it?) only to be hit with a one-two gut punch. Best wishes for Mina and her recovery, and yours, too. I'd say hang in there long enough and you might be able to get one of tdarcos' kidneys, but you know he's going to outlive us all.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."
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AArdvark
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Re: 2024
I'm reading your post with one hand in my hair saying fuuuuuuuk! That's some stressful episodes right there. That's holding a bucket of stress, thinking you got this contained while a cargo plane carrying industrial-grade stress crash lands on you, that's what that is.
I want to send a care package, is there anything you need?
I want to send a care package, is there anything you need?
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Da King
- Posts: 851
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Re: 2024
I cannot imagine the pain of watching your daughter go thru what she is going thru. That is an absolutely terrifying story, but I am VERY happy to hear that she seems to be well down the road to recovery. Please keep us updated on her progress.
And then the kidney shot (Sorry) of your situation. Holy cow. It's really not fair how these things happen to people. I will offer one small anecdotal story. A friend of my wife's has been going thru the EXACT same thing. She has lived with it perfectly fine for several years now (backing up your 'slow growing' information). They are still weighing removing the kidney, but apparently there are other complications with removing hers. Apparently she gets very conflicting information from different doctors too. I dont know how patients are supposed to make informed decisions when their doctors cannot agree. I hope you have a similar experience to as far as living with it, but a better one as far as treatment plans. Again please keep us updated. Best of luck.
And then the kidney shot (Sorry) of your situation. Holy cow. It's really not fair how these things happen to people. I will offer one small anecdotal story. A friend of my wife's has been going thru the EXACT same thing. She has lived with it perfectly fine for several years now (backing up your 'slow growing' information). They are still weighing removing the kidney, but apparently there are other complications with removing hers. Apparently she gets very conflicting information from different doctors too. I dont know how patients are supposed to make informed decisions when their doctors cannot agree. I hope you have a similar experience to as far as living with it, but a better one as far as treatment plans. Again please keep us updated. Best of luck.
---
Its Good To Be Da King!
Its Good To Be Da King!
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Jizaboz
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Re: 2024
Gotta complete Life & Death 1 and 2 for DOS or Amiga.Da King wrote: Sun Nov 10, 2024 8:50 pm I dont know how patients are supposed to make informed decisions when their doctors cannot agree.
PB I’ve been keen on what you’ve been going through and I hate it for you man. Hopefully things turn around soon and really glad Mina is doing better.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
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Roody_Yogurt
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Re: 2024
Wow! Glad things are on the upswing now. How terrifying.
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Flack
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Re: 2024
https://www.amazon.com/Leap-Psychology- ... 1608684474
https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Thousand-Thi ... B07MYK3Z1G
https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Thousand-Thi ... B07MYK3Z1G
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."
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pinback
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Re: 2024
Huh, yeah... I screwed them links up bad.
I would not describe them as "self-help" books.
This one's primarily research and third-person interviews with those reporting the awakening experience -- whether it happened as a result of effort, or accidentally, or they were just born that way.
This one is a first-person report, and in my opinion the only book on the subject I would ever actually encourage anyone to read, if they didn't want to listen to me about it. It's stated plainly, forcefully, and without a hint of "spiritual" nonsense, while ripping a major ass of those who conflate awakening with such hocus-pocus, mystical crap, usually in the service of selling something.
But yeah, I would not characterize either of these as "self-help". There's plenty of books on mindfulness meditation and stuff, which incorrectly (in my view) gets mixed in with the awakening/enlightenment I'm talking about. I put it this way:
Mindfulness meditation can be very valuable and helpful in feeling better. Awakening is of absolutely no help whatsoever.
(EDIT: Thanks, Flack! I was actually writing this while you posted that. Ya beat me to it!)
I would not describe them as "self-help" books.
This one's primarily research and third-person interviews with those reporting the awakening experience -- whether it happened as a result of effort, or accidentally, or they were just born that way.
This one is a first-person report, and in my opinion the only book on the subject I would ever actually encourage anyone to read, if they didn't want to listen to me about it. It's stated plainly, forcefully, and without a hint of "spiritual" nonsense, while ripping a major ass of those who conflate awakening with such hocus-pocus, mystical crap, usually in the service of selling something.
But yeah, I would not characterize either of these as "self-help". There's plenty of books on mindfulness meditation and stuff, which incorrectly (in my view) gets mixed in with the awakening/enlightenment I'm talking about. I put it this way:
Mindfulness meditation can be very valuable and helpful in feeling better. Awakening is of absolutely no help whatsoever.
(EDIT: Thanks, Flack! I was actually writing this while you posted that. Ya beat me to it!)
Am I a hero? I really can't say. But, yes.
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pinback
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Re: 2024
Anyway, who cares about that. Back to the important stuff!
1. Today Mina had the flap of skull bone they removed three months ago replaced. They replaced it with a synthetic bone, 3D printed based on the various MRI/CT scans she's had done over her stay here. Miraculous! How did they do any of this before? At any rate, it went very well, so she'll be recovering here in the hospital for a few more days, but if everything's still looking good after that, she's outta here. Finally. Still a long road ahead, but getting back home is the next big step. Our home routine will probably look a lot different than it did before August 16th, but it will likely feel like we have a lot of extra time to accommodate whatever happens, since we're not spending large chunks of our days driving back and forth down I-71 to the hospital and waiting for hospital elevators and walking up from the parking garage, etc., etc. We'll see how it goes.
2. I went into the OR yesterday for them to do a little biopsy/checking it out to see what kind of cancer we're dealing with. Apparently there's the common type, "renal cell carcinoma", which keeps itself to the kidney, and is solved by just yanking the bitch out. Then there's the rarer, more dangerous type, "transitional cell carcinoma", where it spreads out from the kidney and you might be fucked if they don't get it outta there fast enough. All indications are that I have the first one, so now the next step is to arrange the YANK-THE-BITCH surgery procedure. I am not looking forward to that, but the prospect that I might be able to look forward to things for a while after that seems a lot better than the other alternative.
(As part of the procedure, they also inserted a "ureteral stint", which I don't know what it is, but its main function appears to be to make urination extremely painful, and also make it look like you pee rich, unfiltered cranberry juice twice an hour.)
So, two things happened today that would have sounded like nightmares back in July, but now both sound like pretty positive developments.
Crazy times.
1. Today Mina had the flap of skull bone they removed three months ago replaced. They replaced it with a synthetic bone, 3D printed based on the various MRI/CT scans she's had done over her stay here. Miraculous! How did they do any of this before? At any rate, it went very well, so she'll be recovering here in the hospital for a few more days, but if everything's still looking good after that, she's outta here. Finally. Still a long road ahead, but getting back home is the next big step. Our home routine will probably look a lot different than it did before August 16th, but it will likely feel like we have a lot of extra time to accommodate whatever happens, since we're not spending large chunks of our days driving back and forth down I-71 to the hospital and waiting for hospital elevators and walking up from the parking garage, etc., etc. We'll see how it goes.
2. I went into the OR yesterday for them to do a little biopsy/checking it out to see what kind of cancer we're dealing with. Apparently there's the common type, "renal cell carcinoma", which keeps itself to the kidney, and is solved by just yanking the bitch out. Then there's the rarer, more dangerous type, "transitional cell carcinoma", where it spreads out from the kidney and you might be fucked if they don't get it outta there fast enough. All indications are that I have the first one, so now the next step is to arrange the YANK-THE-BITCH surgery procedure. I am not looking forward to that, but the prospect that I might be able to look forward to things for a while after that seems a lot better than the other alternative.
(As part of the procedure, they also inserted a "ureteral stint", which I don't know what it is, but its main function appears to be to make urination extremely painful, and also make it look like you pee rich, unfiltered cranberry juice twice an hour.)
So, two things happened today that would have sounded like nightmares back in July, but now both sound like pretty positive developments.
Crazy times.
Am I a hero? I really can't say. But, yes.
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pinback
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Re: 2024
From what we have been told, it's as good as new, and we never have to think about it again. Her skull is done growing, though, so that simplifies matters.
I assumed she'd have to wear the protective helmet for some period of time afterward, but even that, they were like, nope.
Pretty remarkable. All of this has been pretty remarkable, and our general opinion is that for something so horrible, it really has gone as well as it could have.
Still, probably best not to get a brain infection if you can avoid it.
I assumed she'd have to wear the protective helmet for some period of time afterward, but even that, they were like, nope.
Pretty remarkable. All of this has been pretty remarkable, and our general opinion is that for something so horrible, it really has gone as well as it could have.
Still, probably best not to get a brain infection if you can avoid it.
Am I a hero? I really can't say. But, yes.
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Flack
- Posts: 9057
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Re: 2024
I wish you had hit me up first, my 3D printer is over here collecting dust. Also I can't seem to design anything from scratch and can only modify models other people's models so there's a good chance it may have a GoPro camera mount or vase for flowers attached to the top.
I can't believe she doesn't have to wear a helmet or anything. It's amazing how fast kids bounce back. I hurt my shoulder by sleeping on it wrong and it hurt for like a year. And I had to wear a helmet.
I can't believe she doesn't have to wear a helmet or anything. It's amazing how fast kids bounce back. I hurt my shoulder by sleeping on it wrong and it hurt for like a year. And I had to wear a helmet.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."