Lucky Boy

Kerm here,
I had a spat of carotid stenosis yesterday and had to be flown to University of Miami Hospital.  They tell me I'm lucky here at the hospital as the blockages are fairly pronounced and can't believe I came out this clean as far as stroke repercussions.

I woke up quite early yesterday morning figuring that maybe I would read for awhile and if lucky I would be tired enough to fall back asleep before the sun came up.  The book was so good that I ended up reading into the daylight plus another hour.  At that point my right eye went mostly blank,  blank white.  Haven't we all been lead to believe that when you go blind the color would be black.  Nope, white is my blind color.

At that point I woke up Chris and Linda and with a lot of scurrying around they brought out the medical book and a blood pressure cuff.  Blood psi was up but not that bad and the book as we expected came up with stroke.  About that time the eyesight started coming back in blocks,  Weird man.  Then as it was almost all there I got tunnel vision in the same eye for 5 or 10 minutes before all went back to normal. 

All of us at that point knew what we had to do (get to a hospital) but still we wavered and decided to give Barb Wold a call and see what she thought.  She is a practicing RN but gave us the phone # for the Blue Cross nurse line.  Sat phones are great but are prone to loosing satellite connections so it was two calls to Barb and two call to Blue Cross.  All parties said get your skinny little white ass to a hospital.  

We're still at Black Point.  Chris called Loraine (one of the settlements elders) to check if any planes where coming in today and to explain the situation.  Loraine said there was a plane coming in soon so dinghy in and she would give us a ride to the airport.  Loraine was waiting and as we drove the short distance to the airport she told me that she found out who was leaving Black Point on the airplane and called the fellow to explain our situation as to bump him off the flight.  You don't say no to Loraine.  There is more to the airport saga but lets just say I did get to Nassau on the puddle jumper.  Linda made me reservations for the next leg to Miami.  We picked Miami because it was the closest in connecting flight departure time and easy to get back from.  We also figured good hospitals and probably under the circumstances a longer flight to places like MSP might not be prudent under the circumstances.  More drama getting to the hospital from the airport but I'm leaving that for the movie.

Arrived at the hospital emergency room at about 4:30 pm.  Between waiting, tests, waiting, financial stuff, waiting, getting my room ready, waiting, more tests, more waiting, more drugs and I finally get to the room at midnight.  Shortly after a nurse comes in and says I have to go for more tests.  I had had it and started asking questions and the bottom line is that she thought I was going down for some type of leg tests.  I protested.  She left.  She came back I think twice with better information that was still on the thin side but I gave up.  Those tests where not done until about 1:30 am.  Then, more paper, more in room tests...  I didn't get to sleep until about 2:30 but was further interrupted nearly every hour until sun up by blood psi tests, etc.  More the same today and the consult is sometime today.  Keep in mind a day at a hospital is indeed 24 hours long.  The consult yesterday was at 11:45pm.

Kerm