- The second surgery on Friday went fine.
- Elder Son and I went to see Smokey on Saturday.
- He was much, much, much better.
- He will probably come home Monday or Tuesday.
- Our annual reservation at a campground on the North Shore starts a week from Wednesday.
- It now appears we might just be able to go.
- Smokey is pretty sure he can recuperate better and faster listening to the sounds of Lake Superior.
- I hope he is right.
- Elder Son's visit home at this time has been a godsend.
- Tis very handy having a doctor in the house.
- Younger Son was hit by a car last night while riding his bike.
- Hit from the side, but the car hit his back wheel, not him.
- He is mostly okay, nasty scrapes on his knees and to a lesser extent his elbows.
- He doesn't remember the actual crash but remembers flying through the air thinking, I don't remember hitting the ground.
- And then hitting the ground. He landed on his right kidney.
- The driver and passenger were very concerned. Called 911 immediately.
- Police, ambulance, and fire truck (fire truck? why a fire truck?) were there within a minute or two.
- He was put into the ambulance and checked over.
- After a few minutes his blood pressure dropped rather precipitously, and they made him lie down.
- But he was okay and did not need to go to the hospital.
- Elder Son explained what happened with the blood pressure.
- When one has a surge of adrenalin (the fight-or-flight response of the sympathetic nervous system), it also stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system (which generally promotes the maintenence of the body at rest (cribbed from Wikipedia because I can't remember exactly the terms ES used). But sometimes the parasympathetic response overshoots the mark, resulting in the drop in blood pressure.
- And that is my paraphrase of what the expert said.
- YS is stiff and sore today and needed a bit of help to get up from his chair at dinner
- Mainly I am supremely happy that YS is not dead or in the hospital.
- Two family members in the hospital would be way too many.
- Some gizmo on the car that has been marginal for a while decided to completely nutso on our way to Minneapolis today.
- It wanted the car to go 52 mph. Period.
- This was not noticeable on the highway.
- It became very noticeable when we hit a half mile of stop and (5mph) go caused by a bit of road construction on the bridge over the Mississippi.
- Repeated continual braking causes the brakes to slowly fail.
- By the last couple stop lights before the hospital I was having to stand on the brake pedal with both feet AND use the emergency brake to keep the car from creeping forward onto the car ahead of me.
- With much internal cursing and extreme driving finesse I managed to get ES and to the hospital, to YS's and fiance's apartment, to a nearby restaurant, back to the apartment, and back to Wisconsin without any mishap.
- I shall not be driving that car again until I take it to the mechanic's shop. (That would be Lennie. Remember Lennie?)
I need to clear up any possible misconceptions about Smokey's infection and the VA hospital. The VA docs and nurses and other staff and the care they gave him were in no way responsible for the infection. Smokey has for several years taken an immunosuppressant drug for his rheumatoid arthritis. He had to stop taking it for four weeks before the surgery and was not supposed to restart until at least two weeks afterward. One week post op he was having so much joint pain from the RA that he decided to take the drug. A few days later... infection. And so it goes.
