Al2006

It is one fine morning today. Not a cloud in the sky. Cold, but will get warmer. I'm waiting for my truck to get towed home. Drove it to a shop, and now they cant get it started. They say I need a new motor. I'll pick at it myself for a while first. Need to get my trees ordered. I still want those Almond trees. I also want a couple more Pecans. My Nerve pain is taking on more of the hot sensation. My shoulder has constant pain, but now it feels like I am wearing a heating pad down the side of my neck, over my shoulder, and down my arm. I notice my leg is hotter also. My leg also has more of the tingling, asleep feeling. I transplanted about 15 of my pine trees over the past week. I filled in where trees were missing on the sides of our property. I'll get new saplings to fill in where I took them from in the back. I built a pole barn just before I stroked. I was not finished all the way yet. I need to get the electrical put in. A friend told me to build it 20 feet longer than I did. Now I see why. They fill up with stuff fast. Towtruck driver just called for directions. I better go wait for him.

Today I hurt pretty bad. My nerve pain is giving me a lot of grief. But I believe I have to keep on going. I want so bad to just lay down and give up. But I think the reason I have recovered as good as I have is that I just go. I tried to walk without my cane to early and my Neuro was very demanding that I use it. I figured I would get better faster if I "had" to walk on my own without the cane. I was not thinking it was not safe for me. A fall would not be good on the thinners. I dont have to use the cane now. I just read Minnie's Blog about her court case. Sorry to read what happened to her. I am about to enter the frey myself. If you have read some of what I have I have writen, I have talked about my situation a little. My stroke "started" over a year before it happened. I had a small bump in my left neck that hurt. I went to my family doctor and had him check it. I told him I thought it was my artery, because I could feel my pulse in the bump. He sent me to get an ultrasound done, with the referral saying to check "swollen Carotid artery". I went and had it done. I had to call my doctor because he did not call me. I was told that there was nothing wrong, nothing to worry about. My doctor did nothing more, so I went on with life. The pain went away. Almost a year later, it bothers me again. This time I can see that there is some swelling inside my neck. I remember that there was nothing wrong with my artery, so I assume that I must be suffering the fate of some of my mothers family, throat cancer. I again go to my doctor. I tell him I still think it is my artery, or is it cancer? He does not know what it is and sends me more test. I get another ultrasound, and a Ct scan. I go to two ENT's. I am again told it is nothing. Again it is dropped without finding out what I am complaining about. Again I go on with life. Again the pain goes away. Then on Oct. 5, 2006, I go into the hospital for a routine procedure to expand my esophagus. At about 12:30 p.m. on the 6th I go in for the procedure. I stroke during the procedure. No one catches it. I awake in recovery and at once say something is wrong. I am ignored. I am sent back to my room, where I can not move to get myself from the gurney into bed. This does not alarm the nurse in charge, four people just pick me up and put me in bed. My wife instantly starts asking if I stroked. She is told no, I must have slept wrong, or the anethesia is affecting me. My wife stays for hours trying to get me to move and bugging the nurse, until she is told to go home and let me rest. I am in and out during this period. I felt sick, with a pounding headache. At 10:30 a.m. on the 7th a doctor comes in to release me to go home. I tell him I cant move my right side, I have a pounding headache, and my heart is racing. He finally has me do what should have been done when I awoke after the procedure, move my fingers and toes. He instantly says that he thinks I stroked. You would think that the ball is finally moving now, but no, everything stops again. Finally at about 1:00 p.m. a Neuro comes in to see me. He also says that he thinks I stroked. Again it stops cold. At about 3:00 p.m. I finally am given a baby aspirin. That is it, that was my treatment. On the 8th I am finally given an MRI which showed I still had a 2 cm. blood clot deep brain. Nothing is done. At night I am given a Plavix. (I now know that anesthesia does not paralyze you. And that Plavix and aspirin do not dissolve clots.) I am sent home on the 10th with no PT, and no reason for why I stroked. I am told to take Plavix and not to go to work for about a month. I was almost shoved out the door with the words, "Remember, we took good care of you". I stroked at home on the 17th. This time I go to Toledo hospital. They took me serious at once. The Neuro there could not believe that I was sent home without finding out why I stroked. He orderd test at once. They found the cause of my strokes. That darn bump in my neck was a huge aneurism, the size of a ping pong ball. I had what is called an Ectasia. This is where the whole artery swells like a garden hose. This allowed the blood to slow and clot. I had a vein taken from my leg and it was used to replace my left carotid artery. They also see that I am getting the same thing in my right Carotid artery. Now how do they see what all the others did not? This is what the Lawyer is hopefully going to find out. Basically the blame for my strokes lies with the people that missed the aneurism when I first complained, they are responsible for my strokes. What the hospital did is next. I am where I need to come up with the cash to hire an expert to read the radiology reports. If he see's the aneurism, the lawsuit is on. Then we'll go after the hospital. I feel I have a tight case, but you never know.

Hello Kimmie, Sorry to hear about your situation. In church today one message was that you have to forget the past before you can move into the future. At least it is over now, and you can move on. Al

It's 4:45 p.m. on Sat. I just got home from work. I had a tough day. I woke up with one of my stroke headaches. Almost cant function. Thinking about my trees. Spring is coming, and I have a few trees to work on. I have planted 33 fruit trees and 18 nut trees over the last couple years. I want to get a few more. My wife thinks I'm crazy. I planted 200 pine trees around our property two years ago. I need a few more to replace dead or mowed over trees. I found out that Almond trees will grow here, so they are on my list. The last couple of years I have planted a 1/4 acre garden. Boy that takes some time to care for. It's going to shrink a lot this year. It's hard to keep motivated when you can buy canned veggies for less than you can do it yourself. I think this year I'll make time to do a little camping. In CA. we camped a lot. It's nice in the CA. mountains. We need to find somplace around Ohio that the family likes. We have not found anyplace here yet. How do you call it camping when you are ten feet from the next camper? In CA. we were 75 feet or more apart, in the woods. That was nice. My head is pounding, I think I'll stop for now.

Thank you all for your feed back. I know I have to get over this. I do just sit and look at the sunsets now. I take walks in the park. Lay in bed and think how lucky I am. I keep thinking of a time not long ago that I was feeling sorry for myself, complaining to my wife over dinner at Red Lobster. In walks a boy about 6 years old. He was apparently born with a crippling disease. Just a happy go lucky kid. And here I am complaining. That made me feel shallow. I have talked to a Lawyer about what happened to me. Ohio has low caps on malpractice. And he says that there was no foul if I'm better. It does not matter what they did if I got better. And you have to prove that if they had done something, would I really have done better. Cant dwell on that, it angers me too. But I had a good day today, a good day yesterday, and maybe a good day tomorrow.

So what about that aneurism?. Well it all started over a year ago. I noticed that my neck was sore and I could feel a bump that pulsed. I go to my family doctor and tell him I think it is my Carotid artery. He feels it too. He sends me for an ultra sound. The Radiologist says that nothing is wrong. So I am told that nothing is wrong, the pain goes away but not the bump, life goes on. Months later it starts to hurt again. The bump is still there, pulsing away. My throat does not look right to me. Since I have been told that there is nothing wrong with my Carotids, I now fear that I might have throat cancer which runs in my mothers family. Again I go to my family doctor, who sends to to two different specialists. I tell them how I feel and that I can feel a bump that I think is my Carotid artery pulsing. Ultrasounds and Ct scans are done. I am told that I dont have cancer, there is nothing wrong with my Carotids, and that what I feel must be swollen salivary glands. Again the pain eventually goes away and life goes on. Then I have the procedure to fix my swallowing. The reason my thoat did not look right to me was because the aneurism was the size of a ping pong ball and was pushing things out of it's way. Now how did all the doctors I saw mis it. Who knows? Needless to say I am smoking mad about the whole thing. If someone had taken me serious about what I felt, the strokes would not have needed to happen. If someone at the hospital would have listened, all I went though and still am might have been less. I would have been better off to stroke at the grocery store, a layperson could have figured out I was having a stroke. Instead I get a bunch of "professionals" that know to much to listen to me. I know I have to try and get over the anger. But it is tough. Almost every minute of every day I am reminded of them. When my shoulder hurts so bad I can hardly stand it, I think of them. When I cant fall asleep at night because my leg is hurting and tingling so bad, I think of them. When my neck cramps so bad I get a withering headache, I think of them. When my part of me is burning, and part is freezing, I think of them. When I shower and cant feel the water on my my neck, I think of them. I hurt and I blame them. It's hard to get over being angry. This is why my wife put me on to this site. So that I can chat with others who can relate to what I'm going though. It's nice to write this out, even if nobody reads it.