Greeting fellow friends:
Herein I shall tell you several stories; tales of my recent and ongoing kidney stone adventure, my status as a substitute teacher and application to start a full teaching credential, updates on my various puppies and kitties, and a request for aid due to my Winter Break Unemployment because no classes mean no pay for a substitute teacher.
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KIDNEY STONE
It began about a week ago one evening when I started getting an increasingly intense abdominal pain. I initially self-diagnosed this pain as being an intestinal blockage as I had a blockage about ten years ago, then requiring a trip to the ER. This pain was very similar and was coincident with my having eaten a lot of high-fiber vegetables in the previous few days, and a lot of raw pecans that night. I figured that resulted in a blockage, and so I stopped eating and waited for my bowels to void. After about 36 hours, I was not passing anything anymore, yet I felt bloated and the pain increased and, still thinking I had a blockage, went to the Emergency Room of Natividad Medical Center in Salinas. I was worried because one of my neighbors had died of an intestinal blockage, and I was susceptible due to my colostomy and at least six significant hernias.
It took me a while to get ready to go, primarily getting a lot of food out for the dogs and cats. I put out food in “gravity-fed” feeders, but it happened that both the cat and dog feeders were nearly empty. The feeders hold about 16 pounds of food each, so I filled each. Being I was intense pain, it took me a while to fill both and get ready to drive to the hospital. I packed my “just in case I’m admitted” bag with several sets of underwear, t-shirts, and my laptop and a phone charger and drove off to the ER.
I spent about 12 hours in the ER waiting as they evaluated me. It was a Friday night and it was busy.
I got checked into the ER after hours of waiting in the freezing waiting room sitting in horribly uncomfortable chairs. When I was finally admitted, I told the doctor about my hypothesis that I had a blockage and how worried I was because my former neighbor had died from a blockage.
The guy in the section next to me was an inmate who was apparently mentally challenged, and I mean that in the sense he sounded like one of the “special” children I’ve worked with but in an adult form. I heard the nurse tell the doctor “watch out he’s a biter”. They needed to give him a shot for some reason and he kept shouting NO!, and several deputies held him down and the needle went into his leg, he started screaming like he was being eaten alive by a bear. It was a similar story when they needed to put in an IV in that he SCREAMED like he was being murdered. I know IVs are not pleasant, but it’s not that painful. The nurse told him for about ten minutes “it’s over” yet he kept screaming. The guards sounded dismissive as they referred to him as a “crackhead”. I was wondering if he might somehow get up as there was only a curtain between he and I. I got a look at him during one time when I went to the restroom in the ER. I reflected how sad it was that he turned out to be an inmate in jail when it seemed obvious to me that he needed to be in a mental hospital to get treatment.
The ER doctor told me that my white cell count was about 16,000; normal was about 2000. That number is high, but not dangerously high, but was high enough to indicate something was going on. Dangerously high would have been about 100,000.
I was told they wanted to give me a CATScan because the doctor thought I had a kidney stone and not a blockage. I had been on the CATScan machines at Natividad many times in the past 15 years, including times when I was much heavier than I was now. The CATScaners had a limit of 450 pounds, and I had been on it when I was as much as 440. As I was at 380 pounds, I was the lightest I’d been in decades. Yet, apparently, some hospital bureaucrat decided they would not put anyone over 350 pounds on their machines. These were the SAME MACHINES that I had been on as recently as the previous year, but now they would not scan me. So I was told that they were going to look for another hospital who would scan me. At first they were talking about sending me to Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, 100 miles away, but eventually, they found that Community Hospital of Monterey Penninsula (CHOMP) would take me. About 7 am Saturday morning after being in the ER for about 12 hours, I was loaded on an ambulance and took the trip to Monterey.
This was my first time at CHOMP. After I got registered, I was given the CATScan which showed that I had a 5mm stone in the tube between my left kidney and bladder, aka a ureter. It was blocking urine from flowing between the kidney and the bladder and the fluid pressure was causing the pain.
I was told about the options and I chose to have a stent installed to open up the ureter to allow urine to flow. The stone would be left in place at first and would either pass on its own later or later would be broken up by a laser via a catheter.
I was knocked out completely for the procedure. I remember going in, being on the table and being told the drugs were starting to flow, and the next thing I remembered was hearing the nurse say “Mister Green”. As my students call me “Mister Green”, I started dreaming I was in a classroom and one of my students was talking to me and I opened my eyes and turned to look at the nurse the way I’d react to a student calling out MISTER GREEN in class. It took me a bit to remember where I was.
I was taken back to my room. I had a foley catheter in my urinary tract. The surgeon told me that when he put in the stent there was a lot more blood than he expected. Over the next couple of days, I stayed in the hospital and the blood flowed thick. At first, it was like tomato sauce and eventually lighted up to diluted cranberry sauce color.
The view out my hospital room window when I was at CHOMP for a Kidney Stone.
While in the hospital, I noticed the wind whipping the trees outside my window. I looked at Weather.com and saw that it high winds were predicted that night at my home, up to 55 miles per hour. Two years previously all three fences, back, and both sides had blown down during a similar wind storm resulting in my little girl pupper Delight meeting the boy dog next door and that resulted in puppies. I was afraid that one or more fences might blow down and I would not be home to protect my puppies. I reflected it might be a strange cycle that the puppies came because of a wind storm and I might lose them due to a wind storm. I had a friend of mine go by and check on them, and I was relieved to hear that the fences remained upright.I spent several days in the hospital getting morphine and IV fluid and peeing in my bag. I was worried about my critters and so I pushed and they let me go home earlier than they would have wanted. My urine was still pink but getting better so it wasn’t dangerous, but they firmly told me that if there were any problems to come right back immediately.
According to my surgeon, this was a very close thing. Had I waited another day or two, my condition might have resulted in a serious infection, in which case I would now likely be either VERY sick or dead.
This brings to mind that I hope that if anything were to happen to me, someone would take it on themselves to find my dogs and cats new forever homes.
I asked about a procedure called lithotripsy which involves getting into a big tub of water and using focused sound waves to break up the stone internally so that the particles would come out, but I was told I am too big for lithotripsy to work, so the stone either comes out on its own or they will go back in and laser it until it breaks up.
The stone is still in me as I write this, Friday night January 11, 2019. My urine is alternately clear and occasionally pink. I have to go to see a urologist to have the stent removed and deal with the stone if it hasn’t passed by then.
The doctor told me I should take about a week off to recover, but being a substitute teacher means not working equals no pay and likewise no sick leave. As I had already been off for the Winter Break Unemployment, I needed to work as soon as possible. Still, I was too pained to work right away and I ended up taking several days off after school started. This is part of why I’m requesting aid at the end of this post.
Teaching Update:
Winter break is over and I have gotten booked up to teach almost every day for the next few months and I have scattered assignments all the way through summer. As I stated above, I had to take several days off due to the kidney stone.
John E. Steinbeck Elementary, the Red Pony was a story he wrote.
Thursday and Friday I went to a couple of different schools as a Roving Substitute. I lucked out in that at both schools, most of the meetings were canceled and I spent most of each day in the teacher’s lounge with close access to the little teacher’s potty room.
At one second-grade classroom, when I entered the students started crying out MISTER GREEN and "remember us?" and "you were our teacher in kindergarten". The regular teacher was a first surprised because I gather that most substitute teachers don't get that kind of reaction. :-D
Student drawing of Mister Green
Before the winter unemployment, I had registered with the Salinas High School District, and I have many upcoming assignments at various Salinas High Schools including my alma maters, Alisal High School and El Sausal Junior High (Now Middle School).
I am in the process of putting together my application to Cal State Monterey Bay (CSUMB) for the multiple subject teaching credential program, which would begin next summer if all goes well and I can get the tuition funding raised. More on that later.
JTG’s Critters Update:
My critters are doing well, and I thank those of you who have sent food and supplies. It’s enabled me to keep them, and they have kept me sane during some of the worst times of my life.
Mama and four puppers, L-R; Zorrita, Brunhilda, Fenris, Delight, Dorcas.
To review, I have five dogs and three cats.
The dogs include the Mama, Delight, and her four puppers.
I named Delight after one of my ancestors, Delight Otis, who was born in 1708 in Boston, Massachusettes and had seven children before she died in 1748.
The four puppies are Dorcas, Zorrita, Brunhilda and the only boy, Fenris. They are small but active and they are full of love and poop.
Anubis and Delight before the arrival of the puppers
The three cats include my oldest cat, Anubis, who unfortunately won’t come inside anymore because the puppies freak him out. I have to put food out on the front porch for him, which results also in feeding several feral cats as well.
Anubis is now about twelve years old. He came to Dad and I when after Dad and I had gone away for several days, he had come in the unintenionally open back door. He was in my then-dog Norman’s food bowl, a tiny kitten that was skin and bones and probably within days, maybe hours of starving to death.
I showed the tiny kitten to Dad, who said “we aren’t keeping that”, and so I naturally ignored Dad, got some tuna out of the cabinet, fed the kitten, got some kitten food, and Anubis became my big baby.
I gave him the surname, Maukat by taking the Egyptian word for cat, “mau” and adding the suffix “-kat” to produce Maukat, and now all my cats are Maukats. Anubis Maukat, Apophis Maukat, and Na’at Maukat.
Apophis with his pet puppies
Fenris (top) and Brunhilda (below)
I am distressed that Anubis won’t come inside anymore, and I’ve been thinking of ways to try to lure him back inside again.
The second cat is Apophis, whom I rescued from a storeroom at Hartnell College’s Art Department. Unlike his stepbrother, Apophis is unphased by the puppies and indeed now treats them like they are his puppies.
Every cat should have a dog and every dog should have a cat.
Baby Na’at and jtg. The ORIGINAL picture on the wall is my Great Great Grandmother who died in 1878.
The third cat came to me quite recently in 2018. Recall I said that feral cats are getting fed as well as Anubis? One morning I walked onto the front porch and I saw a flash of fur dash into an old carpet rolled up and on the front porch awaiting disposal. I reached into the carpet roll and pulled out a grey kitten. It wasn’t the kitten I had seen dash inside, so I reached in and got hold of the second kitten, but the one in my hand was struggling so much that I knew I couldn’t hold onto both and was risking losing both, so I let go and the other dashed away. I still see it on the front porch a lot.
Na’at and Dorcas
I took the kitten inside and put it into a pet carrier. I put all the dogs outside as it was warm. Over the next couple of weeks, I let each dog in one by one to get used to the kitten. I was afraid that left alone, one or more of the puppies might kill the kitten. The previous summer one of the puppies had brought in a bloody kitten which I’d nursed back to health and which got adopted. I might have kept that kitten except it was still very young when I was going to Idaho with a friend, who paid for the trip, to see the total eclipse of the sun, and leaving a tiny kitten alone for two weeks with the puppies didn’t seem like a good idea.
Eventually, all the puppies came inside and all got their time with the kitten, whom I decided to name Na’at, after the Egyptian goddess of justice, and now she is bold and pushes her canine siblings around like she’s the boss.
Na’atis also quite obnoxious about demanding love when she wants it and leaps onto my lap, even when full of puppies, and pushing her way to me. Lately, she’s been in what I call “Kitty Pon Far” (like Star Trek’s Spock’s Pon Far) in that she is constantly demanding love.
Due to your donations, I got all my critters spayed or neutered and vaccinated and they all healthy and happy and plump.
Request for Aid, Financial and Otherwise:
If you have read through all that above, thank you. If you simply skipped ahead to here, thank you too.
I am once again requesting aid, this time due to a combination of my unemployment due to the Winter Break where no classes mean no pay. In addition, during the break, I was home every day and it’s been a cold winter, and at the start of the break, I was sick, so as a result I was using my heat almost constantly and resulting in a higher power bill than usual.
It is thanks to you that I and my critters are alive. It’s because of you that I am living indoors or indeed living anywhere. As many of you know, the past few years have been among the worst of my following the Death of my father, who I was his caregiver for fifteen years following his 2000 coma, 2001 recovery until his 2015 death and the abandonment of my siblings. Your help has not only gotten me through with financing and materials but seeing that people have seen my value has given me encouragement to keep going even when I was at the lowest depths of despair and depression.
I am on a pathway I hope will result in my no longer needing to periodically ask for assistance via my teaching and other funding sources. I also ask that you not simply think of helping me as charity, but as an investment and in supporting me as I do good works with children and in the various ways I contribute to society as a whole. Perhaps you enjoy reading about me, my critters, my science wrings, my political opinions, or maybe you just like me.
I don’t ask for anything from anyone who can’t afford to give, and please give to others in need as well in this time of government shutdown.
You can contribute via the Paypal or GoFundMe links. Pet food and supplies also help, and the various items on my Amazon wishlists help as well. Sending pet supplies means I don’t have to tap into my scarce funds, and sending other items helps as well, such as the watch someone sent, the “Logic Pro X” music composing program, or the clothing that was sent to replace my decade old underwear and shirts and socks, among other items.
You can also help on an ongoing basis by contributing to my Patreon account.
Thank you for all your support.
#jtg
I need $1300 for my January Shortfall
I will need more in February and will post an amount then
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