Chapter 24

Chapter 24
December 2009

Well my "employer" decided that he didn't want to take a chance of me driving his truck "in case I have another dizzy spell" so he let me go and when I tried to apply for unemployment he told DOE that I had quit! WHAT?? He was given a copy of my doctors work releease! He just couldn't pay the unemployment due to that bottom feeder he had his truck leased to and as I found out he was the one who told Randy not to put me back in the truck!Something about not wanting me to haul his freight, I think that moron better be glad I'm not one of those who sues on the drop of a penny!

But I tell you it's hard to get a job these days! I'm back to trying and I'm to experienced for most of these companies and they don't want to pay what an experienced driver is worth! It's turning out that a lot of these companies are going for the government tax money and hiring trainees so there are two money makers. One is they can hire someone for 1970 wages of 20 cents a mile AND get tax money from out of our pockets for hiring an unemployed person from off the street! The American people are getting burned on another "socialist" program! The bad thing is over half of these trainees don't survive a couple of months in a truck as it wasn't what they thought it was! Trucking ain't for sissys!

December comes and I have another problem crop up. My right leg from the knee down swells up to as big as my skinny thigh! Well this is a Friday so as usual dummy me thinks what the heck it’ll go down in a day or two.

Wrong again Einstein! By Monday I’m in tears from the pain so I head to the clinic to see what’s going on this time! Well the NP checks me out and sends me down to my most favorite hospital in the world, St. Johns for an ultra sound.

I get in there and I didn’t escape until SATURDAY! Yep once again I’m captured and placed into a room after the ultra sound finds a large blood clot in my lower leg! I have an IV with Heparin, a blood thinner being pumped into me with the usual saline. I have to call my wife to come down with my FAG bag. You do remember what FAG means right? Fast Action Bag and nothing mean towards another persons lifestyle!

Barbara walks in later and looks at me and shakes her head knowing I’m not liking being in here and starts to ask the questions that I couldn’t answer on the phone and which I really have no answers for yet. All I can tell her is it’s a blood clot and I’m getting a blood thinner and I had no idea yet how long I’m going to be in here.

She helps me get into my nice and warm flannel jammie bottoms and don’t even go there people! Hospitals are freaking COLD and get the nurse to unplug me from the IV so I can pull on my warm, yes you got it, jammie top! Along with the non slip socks!

She talks with the nurse and can’t get the answer she wants and then talks with me for a while and heads on home leaving me with the laptop and my own little world!

Then like every other time in here at 5:30 in the morning the parade starts with first vitals and then blood being pulled and a doctor I’ve never met from Jordan Valley Medical Clinic where I had gone yesterday comes in and we have a talk.

He can’t understand why I have a blood clot as I’m not the usual candidate for them as I have good blood pressure, good cholesterol and I’m not over weight.
He decides to check with Dr’s Kim and Holden to see if it might be another hold over of all things, cancer! I know he heard my heart hit the floor when he said that because I know the look on my face told him volumes.

There is that freaking word again! CANCER! It’s only been just over a year and it’s come back to haunt me for the 3rd time! “Cancer”, I think, “the freaking gift that keeps on giving! And I don’t want this freaking gift!”

Well Tuesday I have all three doctors in my room discussing what they think is going on so I get a new pill to take called Coumadin and I’m being set up for another CT scan from the neck down and an MRI of the head for Wed and Thursday!

The CT comes back clean! Nothing found from the neck down! YEEEESSSS! BUT the results of the MRI aren’t so good. Remember back when in August they found that tiny little lesion in the front temporal lobe? Well that “tiny” little thing has grown fairly fast and is just under ½ centimeter big!

Isn’t that just great! Another darn invader has assaulted me! We’re “thinking” one little cancer cell got loose from all the stuff we threw at it and for some reason traveled all around my body and came to rest in my brain behind where this nightmare started! What are the odds!

They pull all the blood thinners from me and are thinking surgery ASAP! On Friday I have 5 doctors in the room with me. From Dr’s Kim and Holden, the Dr from Jordan Valley and now a Nero surgeon and a plastic surgeon. We’re discussing which type of surgery we’re going to do. The first problem is they have NO IDEA as to what this thing which is being called a “lesion” is. They can’t do a biopsy on it as it’s in a bad place! So what are we going to do? Open brain surgery or what I was hoping for cyber knife. But genius here had to ask a silly question a question that made all 5 of these doctors stop talking and look at me as if I dropped something nasty on the floor, but then they had to think about the question which was” After all of this radiation I’ve taken to the head from Tomo therapy to the CT Scans how much more can I take?” Oh yeah I can ask some hard questions! So I get the ole “We’ll get back with you on this” answer!

Friday late afternoon comes around and I only have 2 doctors in the room with me this time the Nureo surgeon and a surgeon who is going to put a new part in me called a filter. It’s going to be placed in my Inferior vena caua vein that is the return vessel from my lower body to catch any pieces of this blood clot that might break loose as it gets smaller. This will happen on Saturday and when they’re done and I wake up from the sleepy juice I get to go home! OH YEAH!

Well I woke up and I have another new scar on my neck and Barb and I head home. We’ll be waiting for the call as to when they want to remove my new “friend” in my head.

Christmas came and went and this year was worse than last year. We didn’t even put up a tree. There was no point to it as there would be no money for presents for under the tree. But family members did send gift cards and money so the boys didn’t go completely without but it tore me apart. I’ve never felt so sad or useless as I have this Christmas. I just hope I’ll be able to have something under the tree next year.